IBF welterweight titlist Errol Spence Jr. stopped by The Breakfast Club yesterday to have a sit-down chat with Angela Yee, DJ Envy, and Charlamange the God. He talks about his life, his boxing career, and his future plans. Check out some excerpts below.
On who is Errol Spence:
“Just a kid from Dallas, Texas man. Just, you know, started boxing, I’m in love with boxing, I’m in love with the sport. Family man, you know, take care of my kids, my family, um, like to chill with friends. I’m just a regular dude outside of boxing.”
On how he got into boxing:
“We’ve always been big fans of boxing, you know, my dad being Jamaican, so, you know, we was big Lennox Lewis fans. I always used to watch boxing all the time and just one day in the summertime I had a lot of idle time on my hands, [my father] didn’t want me hanging out with, you know, friends, you know, getting in trouble and being bored, you know, doing stupid things. So we went to go find a gym and from there I just fell in love with it ‘cause I’ve always been a boxing fan and I’ve always loved to box.”
On the fighters he used to look up to as a kid:
“The guys I looked up to was Zab Judah, of course. Yeah, I come from that era...I’m from Dallas but I was born in New York. Roy Jones, of course. Um, a guy named Terry Norris. I started watching Sugar Ray Leonard later on.”
On if he believes Floyd Mayweather is the best ever:
“Um, it’s hard to say that he’s the best fighter ever. You know, he’s a great fighter, I think he’s the great fighter of this decade but um, you know, me personally, I think Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammad Ali was the best fighter ever.”
On if he respects Floyd’s defensive style of fighting considering he’s more offensive-minded:
“Yeah, I respect it. I think he got more defensive later on in his career. If you watch his fights earlier on he was more aggressive, he was throwing more punches, he was more on the offensive side. He was knocking guys out. And as he got older he hurt his hands and things like that so he started boxing and becoming more defensive.”
On if he’s he’s friends with other fighters in the sport and what if he may have to fight them one day:
“I have no problem fighting people I’m cool with. But guys like the Charlo brothers, Jermell and Jermall, they’re from Houston. You know, we grew up together in the amateurs. Adrien Broner, Rau’shee Warren, Robert Easter — you know it’s just like a lot of guys I grew up with during the amateurs system so we basically grew up together going to training camps and being in training camps for months and weeks.”
On if he was concerned about Broner’s cry for help when he hinted at suicide:
“Uhh, I was a little concerned, like I had hit him up and um, you know, that’s how Adrien is. I don’t think he was gonna do it but that’s how he is.”
On how he’s managed to keep such a level head despite his growing fame and fortune:
“I’m confident in myself. I’m confident in myself, my own abilities, and I don’t let a lot of outside things, you know, distract me. Like my motto is: never too high, never too low, right in the middle. So I always keep it balanced. I believe life is about balance so I don’t let the outside things or outside people or outside entities draw me in. You know, I stay balanced because I know a lot of things I wouldn’t have or a lot of people wouldn’t be on my coattail if I wasn’t world champ or doing so great or in the spotlight.”
On if he feels there’s racism in boxing:
“Umm, it’s a lot of politics in boxing. It’s definitely a lot of politics. You know I feel like some fighters, especially like black fighters like Andre Ward...if somebody of different race would have the same success as Andre Ward he’d be embraced way better. Just like Floyd Mayweather. Like Conor McGregor says, you know, worse things than Floyd but he get embraced by it — ‘It’s just Conor McGregor being Conor McGregor’ but when Floyd does it, it’s something else.
“...I think I’ve been pretty sheltered by Al Haymon in [the case of experiencing racism in the boxing myself]. I don’t think I’ve experienced any racism in boxing.”
On if he was ever nervous during the Kell Brook fight:
“Nah, not in the fight. Not in the fight ‘cause you’re just in the moment so I didn’t get nervous at all. The first couple rounds was a little shaky and I started to pick it up, that’s usually what happens, I pick it up. You know, I believe I’m in shape, I believe in my abilities so I knew later on I was gonna get him and I’ve seen him fade in the GGG fight before, he faded in the Shawn Porter fight, so I knew that in the later rounds I could get him.”
On who he’s gonna fight next:
“I want to fight Danny [Garcia], I’m waiting on Keith Thurman right now. He’s out having fun so, we’ll see...he’s supposed to be injured, supposed to have had an elbow injury, supposed to have had surgery, so he’s supposed to be back early 2018.”
On if that means he’ll fight Danny Garcia next:
“Oh, I don’t know. I have no idea. I haven’t talked to my management yet so hopefully we can get on that and I’ll fight somebody.”
On if it’s true boxers can’t have sex for a month before the fight:
“I don’t do it. Probably about three weeks. Yeah, three weeks til the fight I don’t do it at all. I felt [the difference] in the amateurs so now I don’t do it at all. And I don’t want to find out either because it’s a 12-round fight and so if my legs gone, it’s over. It’s over for you, over some pussy — that you can get after the fight so...”
On what he thinks about the current state of boxing:
“I think the state of boxing is — I don’t think it’ll ever fade away because the sport been around for a long time. But I think it has to get back on regular TV, you know, prime time networks. That’s how it was back in the day with Sugar Ray Leonard and all these guys, you know, even in the amateurs they was fighting in the Olympics on prime time TV in the middle of the day so everybody was familiar with them. And I think it has to get back to that, where we fight on prime time TV, we fight often — can’t fight two times a year — so the fans really get to know us and really embrace us.
“It gotta be the good fights, you gotta have #1 fighting #2, #3 fighting #4, stuff like that...It just has to be more consistent where the top guys are fighting each other.”
On what music he’s listening to these days:
“Umm, I listen to Yo Gotti. I like the new Meek Mill, I’ve been listening to Meek Mill for a long time...Big Sean, I like Big Sean, I think he’s slept on...Big K.R.I.T. That’s about it.”
On if he feels he needs a gimmick to market himself into super-stardom:
“I mean, that’s what a lot of people want me to have. Like even when I talk to some of my friends ‘oh you need to do this, you need to talk more, you need to be more vocal, you need to act like this person’...but then I’d be fake ‘cause I won’t be myself. Like I’ll talk more if somebody talk mess to me, I’m not gonna let nobody disrespect me at all, but I’m not gonna go outside my character, go outside my skin just to get more money because then I’m not being myself.
“And at the end of the day, you know, I believe in looking yourself in the mirror and seeing who you really are so I’m not gonna do that ‘cause that just leads to other things: me going outside my character trying to be something that I’m not.”
On Mayweather-McGregor:
“It’s just a money fight. I mean I don’t think it’s for the hardcore boxing fans. It’s for people who just dabble in it. The casuals...It’s just pure entertainment. You can tell by the press conferences — just pure entertainment.
On a prospective date for his next fight and who it could be against:
“Oh nah, we working on that right now. Hopefully it will be in October or early November...It could be a few names. It could be Danny Garcia, it could be Shawn Porter, or, you know, it could be anybody. I don’t know right now.
“I want to fight a top person, I don’t want to fight the old, washed-up boxer...I want to fight the top guys and the top names.”