With the dust now settled on Terence Crawford’s one sided victory over Errol Spence Jr to claim the undisputed welterweight world championship last month, the governing bodies have begun to update their rankings at 147lbs.
And the WBA, whose title Spence held going into the legacy defining fight with Crawford, have demoted the Texan heavily for the defeat he suffered at the T-Mobile Arena.
In their most recently published ratings list, they’ve moved ‘The Truth’ down to number five – which essentially means they view him as the seventh best welterweight in the world, given that super champion Crawford and “regular” champion Eimantas Stanionis are not included in the numeric list.
Apart from a potential hit to Spence’s ego, the rankings do not mean a great deal, as he has the option to activate a contractual rematch clause for another crack at Crawford.
And all indications are that this is the route that Spence will go down, though he stated at the post fight press conference he would prefer a second fight with Crawford take place up at light middleweight.
This came as no surprise, as he has made no secret of the fact the cut down to 147lbs is not a pleasant one for him, and there is a view amongst some that the weight was a contributing factor in Spence’s sub par performance on July 29th.
Luckily for him, Crawford – who holds all the cards around the terms for a potential rematch – said he would have no issues with running it back up at 154lbs.