Trainer Derrick James joined Brian Custer on the Last Stand Podcast to discuss a number of topics, but perhaps most notable touches on recent interview from Errol Spence, who essentially threw him under the bus for not properly preparing him for the Terence Crawford fight. Here’s some of what he had to say with the full interview at the top!
James on Spence calling the Crawford training camp ‘trash’
“This is what I’ll say: we weren’t able to do everything that we normally do to prepare for a fight…I had two other training camps going on at the same time.
But they never trained at the same time but they were going on simultaneously. So I won’t say it was trash but it’s his perception, so nothing I can do about it.
“It was [disappointing to hear him describe it that way] but it’s for him, though. I mean like, okay, he said he didn’t spar. No, he did spar for two weeks and supposedly he got injured in the last week of the sparring so he couldn’t spar for the next eight weeks because he had suffered an injury in that sparring session. So that’s the only thing that was really different, that he didn’t have the ability to spar because he was injured.”
On Spence criticizing the preparation for Crawford fight
“He had two guys that were switch hitters [for sparring partners], both of them fought left-handed, right-handed. And so supposedly one of them injured him. I didn’t see when it happened and he didn’t acknowledge that he was injured. But the next following week we sparred, then we took a day off from sparring, then we sparred against on Saturday…So that’s when I realized, they was like ‘hey man, his ribs are hurt.’…I said ‘listen, you need to go get that looked at, checked out,’ and I guess he did or he didn’t. I don’t know because I didn’t go with him but we just kept working.
“His father said he’s not sparring, he going to save it for the fight. His father is the one that said no sparring, and he was complaining about the way the other guys were sparring, so that’s who it was.
“The funny thing about it was…the week of in Vegas I said we can spar a little bit but spar with one of your buddies that won’t shoot body shots if you have an injury. And he said ‘No, I’m not doing that, I’m not sparring. No.’ So he wouldn’t even do it then. So, hey, it is what it is.
“It takes nothing away from what Terence Crawford did. So this is all about something that’s in-house.”
On not being specifically responsible for arranging Spence’s sparring partners
“Any of the fighters I train will tell you I never get their sparring because what you have to understand is PBC has a roster of fighters. So they have a Rolodex thicker than mine, which I don’t even have one. So they will pick particular sparring partners and I’ll okay them, but I’m not getting them, I’m not looking for them. I’m not doing any of that.
“I don’t get the sparring partners. I never have. Any people who I train will tell you that’s not what I’m doing. I’m training them, preparing them for a fight. I okay a sparring partner, but I’m not going out there looking for them.”
