Terence Crawford wouldn’t accept an offer to fight Errol Spence next.

Crawford wants to finally fight Spence, but the unbeaten WBO welterweight champion doesn’t think he would get credit for beating his welterweight rival in Spence’s first fight following a car accident that has left skeptics questioning Spence’s ability to return to the elite level. Spence suffered cuts to his face and dental damage in that one-car crash October 10, which resulted in Dallas police charging him with driving while intoxicated.

The 30-year-old Spence is training, though, and expects to fight in September or October. The undefeated IBF/WBC champion intends to face a top welterweight whenever he returns to the ring, but his highly anticipated showdown with Crawford will have to wait.

Crawford (36-0, 27 KOs) feels facing Spence (26-0, 21 KOs) in Spence’s first fight back would be a mistake for both of them.

“He said he was going right into a fight with Danny Garcia or Pacquiao or me,” Crawford told Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix during a recent episode of Mannix’s podcast. “I told him like me, personally, like don’t come back trying to fight me because that ain’t the fight that you really want on your first fight to come back. Like, you know, I wouldn’t even take that fight if it was offered to me. I wouldn’t take it because it’s a lose-lose situation for me. You know, if something was to happen and I knocked him out, or I beat him up bad, they would say, ‘Oh, well, he’s not the same Errol Spence. He’s coming off a car accident, and this and that, that and this.’

“And then that would never end. For my whole career, even after my career, everybody would be talking about how I fought Errol Spence after he got [in] the car accident, and I didn’t wanna fight him before the car accident. That would be the story [line]. So, I just wanna see him back to the old Errol Spence that he used to be. And then, me and him gonna fight.”

Crawford, 32, mentioned former IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook and WBO junior middleweight champ Patrick Teixeira as potential opponents for his next fight.

Handlers for Brook and Crawford have had conversations about Brook (39-2, 27 KOs) moving back down to the welterweight limit of 147 pounds to challenge Crawford next. Crawford, a three-division champion from Omaha, Nebraska, would have to move up from 147 pounds to 154 to battle Brazil’s Teixeira (31-1, 22 KOs).

Crawford had hoped to fight June 13, but his next appearance has been postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 crisis. In his most recent action, Crawford stopped Lithuania’s Egidijus Kavaliauskas (21-1-1, 17 KOs), his mandatory challenger, in the ninth round December 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.