DeSoto native Errol Spence Jr. dominant in victorious return to ring, retains welterweight titles

DeSoto’s Errol Spence Jr., put forth a dominating performance in his first fight in more than a year with a 12-round unanimous decision victory over Danny Garcia Saturday night at AT&T Stadium.

Spence (27-0) retained his WBC and IBF welterweight titles with the beautiful performance.

Judges Steve Weisfeld and Barry Lindenman scored the fight for Spence 116-112 and Tim Cheatham had it 117-111 for Spence.

A crowd of 16,102 attended the bout. It was the first boxing match at AT&T Stadium during the pandemic.

It was Spence’s first bout since 2019 when he earned a split decision victory over Shawn Porter. Two weeks after that fight, Spence was involved in a horrific car accident that caused him to be hospitalized for two weeks and raised questions about whether he would fight again.

“It’s surreal,” Spence said on the pay-per-view telecast when the event was over. “It’s been a dream of mine to come back since my accident, a year and half layoff and I think I looked pretty good. There was some ring rust there, I got a little tired but I shook off the cobwebs and I’ll be ready to fight again in the summer time.”

Spence suffered severe bruising to his joints, lost some front teeth and had facial cuts due to the accident. Once Spence recovered, he decided the didn’t want an easy fight and elected to face Garcia, a two-division champion from Philadelphia.

The major question for Spence in this fight was whether he would maintain his power at the welterweight division and he did. He dominated this bout with a sharp jab and excellent body punches. Spence opened a small cut on the bridge of Garcia’s noise and swelling under his left eye.

With Garcia (36-3) being a counter puncher, it forced him to get off to slow starts and that played into Spence’s hands because he’s an aggressive fighter.

“He was just the better man tonight, no excuses,” Garcia said on the pay-per-view telecast. “I fought a hard tough fight he had a pretty good jab and that was the key to the fight.”

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