Errol Spence Jr. realizes why fans and members of the media have questioned how he’ll look when he fights for the first time since his car accident.
Spence expected plenty of doubts based on the seriousness of the one-car accident in which he was injured October 10 in Dallas. The undefeated IBF and WBC welterweight champion doesn’t consider any of the criticism he has faced unfair, yet he has used persistent skepticism as motivation to train harder than he had prepared prior to a scary crash that left cuts on his face, damage inside his mouth and a driving while intoxicated charge on his record.
“Some people can be cruel and say all type of stuff, you know,” Spence told Premier Boxing Champions’ Ray Flores as part of an Instagram Live interview Monday. “But I don’t feel like I’ve been unfairly criticized. Because when somebody get into a car accident like I got into and, you know, the car flipped that many times and I get thrown out the car and, you know, everything that I’ve been through in that car accident and stuff like that, people are gonna have thoughts. People have thoughts. People have opinions … on my situation. And they wanna see how I’m gonna come back.
“So, that’s just added motivation for myself and it fuels me, and it makes me work way harder. And I actually do get on YouTube or see the Tweets on Twitter, what people have been saying because it’s added motivation for me. It makes me work harder. It makes me, you know, more focused and it gives me that added hunger that I had, you know, even before the Kell Brook fight. So, you know, like I tell everybody – keep talking. I’m gonna prove everybody wrong.”
The 30-year-old Spence (26-0, 21 KOs), of DeSoto, Texas, has been training for a few months for his comeback bout. It hadn’t been scheduled before the coronavirus crisis temporarily shut down the boxing business.
Spence speculated that he could fight in “September or October,” based on recent conversations with Al Haymon. The 2012 U.S. Olympian had hoped to return to the ring in “July or August” before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Spence last fought September 28, when he dropped Shawn Porter (30-3-1, 17 KOs) in the 11th round and topped Porter by split decision in their 12-round, 147-pound title unification fight at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
–boxingscene.com
