Errol Spence: A good fighter with much potential

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Barclay’s Center in a PBC match televised by NBC, Texas welterweight southpaw Errol Spence stitchripped New York’s Chris Algieri. Spence won every round en route to a TKO in the fifth. Algieri was game throughout, though, again transcending what lowly expectations his social-media brand sets.

Errol Spence is a good fighter with much potential, and that is everything we know of him. He knockedout a viable opponent in only his fourth year of prizefighting, and that puts him well ahead of the standard PBC development template. But Chris Algieri is the consomate b-side, a guy teed-up to be stiffened by Ruslan Provodnikov execution-style two years ago who managed both to survive and win, getting himself invited to Manny Pacquiao’s “Live from China” tour – joining Algieri evermore to a trivial club whose only other member is Brandon Rios – getting him knocked down a bushel and a peck by the congressman, which got him elevated to the top of Amir Khan’s wishlist, getting him decisioned unanimously though not indignantly by Canelo Alvarez’s next victim, making Algieri a perfect matchup for Errol Spence’s primetime debut.

Last year Spence might have fought on NBC against a lad whose name rang no bells with aficionados, both in April and October, but last year the PBC’s coffers were bursting and the public’s perceived appetite for steaming refuse was unlimited. Limits of gullibility shown by viewers and an eerie echo emanating from those coffers this year led the PBC to drop Spence in Lake Algieri, the sort of blackwater-peril Keith Thurman didn’t see till his ninth year of professional fighting. And Spence became the first man to stop Algieri in the 140 years since the 9th Marquess of Queensberry sanctioned rules, so there!

“First man to knock out (insert well-worn journeyman)” is a dumb way to promote a victory, but it’s what the PBC had, and so it made its way instantly into independent fight reports across the fruited plain. To knockout a guy who goes on to dismantle champions is a feat. To knockout an undefeated man, too, is a feat oftentimes. To use a knockout like an exclamation point on a runon sentence comprising oodles of predictable clauses is no feat at all or not one appropriate to the concerns of writers – unless they’re angling for jobs with a promoter or lazy.

Here’s an appropriate concern to those who would profess an expertise in pugilism or sentencemaking. Spence shows a slight case of Devonitis – an affliction named after Devon Alexander and identified via the following symptoms while jabbing: A guard that flies off the cheek, and a chin that rises with a combination’s progress. Spence does not have a severe case, and even if he did, Alexander’s career informs us, those who are paid to notice such things wouldn’t notice such things anyway until a few millions of dollars were made.

USA Boxing, of which Spence is a product, specializes in the dropped-gloves charge, too, and if Spence doesn’t do it baldly as others like Vanes Martirosyan, he does do it a bit. Which is a good thing for aficionados because it means there’s a chance someone on the PBC roster might make fights that are both dramatic and suspenseful.

Spence can be counterpunched and was counterpunched by Algieri. Spence fired back because that is his composition as a prizefighter and because Algieri doesn’t hit very hard. When Spence caught Algieri with left crosses that arrived with the curvature of hooks Algieri was devastated by the blows in a way he was not by Provodnikov’s or Pacquiao’s or Khan’s, in part because Spence is a natural welterweight while Provodnikov fought Algieri at 140 pounds and Pacquiao began his career at 106 and Khan is, well, Khan.

If that is not entirely fair to Spence, neither was the hyperbole heaped upon him by the PBC broadcast crew Saturday. Fairness travels both directions, and presenting Algieri as more than a quintessential b-side is not fair to the men who beat Algieri however much such unfairness is encouraged by their promoters.

Spence did what he was supposed to do, albeit three years prematurely, and that is a comfort of sorts to those few of us who still take a disinterested interest in our oncebeloved sport. Spence has special qualities. In a previous era there’d be no reason to write that already, as professional matchmaking would make his development inevitable and his ascent obvious. In this era, though, and with Spence’s advisor/manager/promoter seeing to Spence’s development, there’s no telling.

Spence made the fourth fight of his career in a small San Antonio gymnasium, the 11th fight of his career in a San Antonio bullring, and the 12th at a converted venue Alamodome expertly named Illusions Theater. Each time I was ringside, and each time Spence was the most talented fighter on the card. In the bullring Spence’s palpable talent was made noticeably more palpable through its juxtaposition with an Olympic teammate’s talent. Terrell Gausha is not good enough at boxing to make his living as anything but a PBC prospect, and so the PBC’s championing of Gausha brings a necessarily nervous titter from those who might otherwise assert Spence will someday reach his potential under that banner.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry