This Saturday night on FOX pay-per-view, Shawn Porter puts his WBC welterweight title up against the IBF belt held by Errol Spence Jr in a big main event showdown from Los Angeles.
Porter was a guest on The Rich Eisen Show on AT&T AUDIENCE Network today to talk about the fight and much more.
On what he has to combat Spence’s advantages
“I have a spirit to fight, a spirit of competition in my heart that will drive me through anything — through a wall, through a truck, whatever I need to do, whatever’s in my way, I’m gonna go through it. Obviously with boxing you have to be smart. You can’t just go out there and throw anything. We’ve trained for Errol Spence, we’ve trained to be aggressive against Errol Spence, get to his body, obviously attack the head as well. We’ve been training to be responsible defensively, meaning when he throws his left hooks and straight lefts and things like that, we’ve got to be ready for all of that.
“The simple way for me to put, and what I would tell Errol is, ‘You’ve never been in the ring with somebody who has the combination that I have. I’m shorter than you are, but I can fight big. I can fight tall, I can fight with range. I can box from the outside. You have never been in the ring with anyone as aggressive as I can be, and as relentless as I can be, and those are the things that you should look for in the fight, and that’s what I’m gonna use to pull off this victory.’”
On stoking the fire and staying hungry
“I’m 31. ... For me to stay young in this sport, for me to stay hungry in this sport, we did a lot of our training in DC. ... Right there we have Barry Hunter, who is my dad’s assistant coach. Barry’s got a lot of young guys in the gym, a lot of guys that are even younger than Errol Spence. With that youth comes hunger, and so when you look into those guys’ eyes, you’re competing against those guys every day, it really does bring up your level of hunger, and has brung up my desire not just to compete, but to do everything I have to do to beat Errol Spence.”
Porter also talks about what LeBron James means to their shared hometown of Akron, Ohio, the slow start for the Cleveland Browns, how he got the nickname “Showtime,” and more. Watch the full interview up top!