Keith Thurman looking to become a force at welterweight

By Boxing News - 02/07/2013 - Comments

thurman542By Ryan Wardle: Keith “One Time” Thurman (19-0, 18 KO’s), the 24 year old welterweight prospect from Clearwater Beach, Florida will climb back into the ring March 9th at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. His fight will be part of the undercard for Bernard Hopkins vs. Tavoris Cloud IBF light heavyweight title match.

Thurman will be squaring off against former IBF welterweight champion Jan Zaveck ( 32-2, 18 KO’s), in a WBO welterweight title eliminator. The winner will become Timothy Bradley’s mandatory challenger, assuming he is victorious in his March 16th bout with Ruslan Provodnikov.

Thurman, who was relatively unknown until the latter part of 2012, is beginning to get some talk about being a formidable opponent in the welterweight division. He has extremely heavy hands, as all but one of his victories occurred by knockout, and he is naturally large for a welterweight.

Thurman is a pressure fighter who excels in cutting off the ring and backing up his opponents. Looking just at Thurman’s statistics he seems to be an impressive fighter and many will say that he is, and they would probably not be wrong. However, there are plenty of points a critic could easily make about his career to this point.

Many people will say he has yet to have a true test, as most of his fights have been against lesser competition. His last fight was against an aging Carlos Quintana who only made it into the 4th round against Thurman. Being a knockout puncher, his stamina could easily be called into question.

Thurman has been past six rounds only once and that was in his sole decision, an eight round fight. The public has also yet to see someone truly test the chin of Thurman. Many may say he hasn’t fought his way up the ranks, but in any event a victory on March 9th should lead to a title shot.

A Thurman vs Bradley fight for the WBO welterweight title would be a good fight to many people. Thurman has a very crowd pleasing style and consistently lands damaging blows. A fair amount of people don’t believe Bradley should even have the belt, but if both men are victorious next month and Bradley doesn’t vacate, he may not have it for much longer



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