WBO 154-lb mandatory Terence Crawford has agreed to step aside to allow WBO/WBC junior middleweight champion Sebastian Fundora to face #1 ranked Errol Spence Jr. next in a voluntary defense in early 2025 in Texas. Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) will fight the winner of that fight later in 2025.
The WBO had previously ordered Fundora and mandatory Crawford to put together a deal for a fight with the deadline before October 10th. There would have been a purse bid tomorrow if not for the deal with Crawford to step aside.
Mike Coppinger says on X that the Spence-Fundora fight will be heading to Texas. There’s no word about how much Crawford was paid to get him to step aside for the Fundora vs. Spence fight to go ahead.
It’s a logical move for Fundora (21-1-1, 13 KOs) to take the fight against Spence first because it’s a more winnable one, and it’ll pay well. Spence has shown to be a bigger PPV draw during his career than Crawford, who despite his talent, has never been a pay-per-view attraction. If Fundora defeats Spence, as many expect him to, he’ll face Crawford in another lucrative fight. As for Spence, retirement would be a likely option if he’s beaten badly by Fundora.
It’s hard to know what the 34-year-old Spence has got left. When he fought Crawford last year, he’d taken off a lot of weight to get down to the 147-lb limit, and he appeared a weight-drained fighter during the contest. But now that Spence is fighting at 154 and he’s controlled his weight, he might have more energy. That would be a bad thing for Fundora, who has already been knocked once in his career against Brian Mendoza in the seventh round in April of last year.
Assuming the Spence-Fundora fight happens in January 2025, Spence will be coming off an 18-month layoff and a bad ninth round knockout loss to Crawford. That’s not ideal for Spence, but it’s fine if this is just a cash out type of fight for him.
If he wanted to give himself a good chance of beating Fundora, he’d take a warmup fight first, but Spence doesn’t believe in those. Spence had been out of the ring for 14 months before his loss to Crawford in July 2023, and we saw the results of that inactivity.
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