Errol Spence Jr adds third belt with stoppage of WBA champion Yordenis Ugas; Terence Crawford next? | Boxing News

Errol Spence Jr became a three-belt welterweight champion by adding the WBA strap to his WBC and IBF titles after stopping Yordenis Ugas in Texas on Saturday night.

At 1:44 in the 10th round, referee Laurence Cole sent Ugas to a corner to have his eye checked out by a ringside doctor for the second time and it was stopped this time despite protests by the Cuban.

Cole had initially sent WBA champion Ugas to the corner with just under a minute left in the eighth round, when the doctor spent an extended time checking the fighter’s peripheral vision before the fight resumed, but Spence kept pounding away and eventually forced the stoppage.

“I think when the fight first started, I was kind of impatient,” Spence said. “Later rounds, when I started setting my shots up, and placing my shots and picking my shots, and not throwing it hard, but letting them go, I was catching him a lot and working him down.

“I felt him breaking down, because he wasn’t throwing like he usually does.

“I kept punching, and I thought the ref was going to stop it a lot earlier.”

Spence, fighting for the first time in more than 16 months, improved to 28-0. His 22nd knockout marked the first time in his last four fights the 32-year-old southpaw did not have to go the distance.

Now it appears there could be a fight between Spence and undefeated WBO champion Terence Crawford to crown an undisputed champion in the 147-pound division. Spence had said leading up to the fight that was he was aiming for that, and repeated that afterward.

“I’ve been saying it this whole week,” Spence said. “One belt to get.”

Soon after the fight, Crawford tweeted congratulations to Spence, writing “great fight now the real fight happens. No more talk no more side of the street let’s go!!!!”

Crawford (38-0, 29 knockouts) last fought in November, a 10th-round TKO of former champion Shawn Porter when defending the WBO title for the fifth time since claiming it nearly four years ago.

In the sixth round of this fight, Ugas delivered a blow which sent Spence’s mouthpiece flying onto the mat. Before the hometown favourite could gather himself, Ugas delivered a left-right combo to the head that sent Spence stumbling toward the ropes, though he did not go down.

While Ugas stared Spence down at the end of the sixth, like he had already done several times, Spence and the crowd of 39,946 at AT&T Stadium were energized. Spence started pounding Ugas with body blows and shots to the face in the seventh.

Spence had not fought since a 12-round unanimous decision over Danny Garcia in December 2020. That was also at the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

It was Spence’s sixth defence of the IBF title he has held since May 2017. But it was only the second fight for the southpaw known as ‘The Truth’, and second defence of the WBC title he won with a split decision over Porter in September 2019.