Terence Crawford Knocks Out Errol Spence in One-Sided Bout

Terence Crawford turned the most significant boxing match of the year into a bruising lesson in the sweet science, dropping Errol Spence Jr. three times en route to a ninth-round knockout on Saturday night to become the undisputed champion at 147 pounds.

Crawford, now 40-0 with 31 knockouts, entered the bout as the World Boxing Organization champion. In dismantling Spence, Crawford added titles from the World Boxing Association, International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Council. The win makes Crawford, 35, of Omaha, Neb., the first undisputed welterweight champion since 2007, and the first in the welterweight division to hold all four titles simultaneously.

After the final bell, Crawford draped the three new belts over his shoulders and raised one fist in triumph while he sipped from a blue water bottle.

“I’m an overachiever,” Crawford said. “Nobody believed in me when I was coming up, but I kept achieving.”

Among serious gamblers, betting odds favored Crawford by a thin margin. But the matchup between previously undefeated boxers was, functionally, a tossup. In the ring, it wasn’t close.

Spence carried Round 1, pressing forward behind a stiff right jab, forcing Crawford to circle the perimeter of the ring, with 22-foot by 22-foot dimensions that figured to favor the shiftier Crawford.

But in Round 2, a quick exchange of punches ended with a short right jab from Crawford that put an off-balance Spence to the canvas. The knockdown marked the first time either fighter had been dropped.

From there, Crawford got to work and Spence appeared increasingly uncomfortable. Crawford knocked Spence down twice more in the seventh round, and the referee stopped the bout in the ninth.

From here, another Spence-Crawford fight is possible on paper. A clause in the contract allows the loser to call for an immediate rematch. One or both fighters might also move up to the 154-pound junior middleweight class. Spence had hinted that the Crawford bout would be his last in the 147-pound welterweight division.