By Gav Duthie: I’m trying to get my head around the fact that people think Kell Brook 33-0 (22) owes a fight to Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman 23-0 (21). To be honest I think Thurman should be flattered that Brook even mentioned him post fight. I can’t remember any American fighters dropping Kell Brook’s name in any interviews in the last five years.
Parallels with Brook
I see a lot of similarities between Thurman and Brook as completely avoided fighters. Thurman is at the stage of his career where fighting him is not financially lucrative enough for the champions to risk facing a top opponent like him with a high risk of losing. Brook was in the same situation before Saturday night and I would ask Thurman to do the same as Brook and bide is time, His turn will come. Thurman is only 25 years old and is arguably ready for a title shot now but Brook would have argued the same 3 years ago when he was 25. He had been the IBF mandatory challenger for 2 years without a shot. The notion that he was scared to fight Devon Alexander was nonsense he was just unlucky. The only time I ever heard any rumor of another title shot was allegedly with Tim Bradley but that quickly disappeared. Brook seems to be a nice guy and he probably sees a lot of what Thurman is going through as similar to his own plight.
Mandatory challenger
Thurman does look world class, he had an amateur record of 101-16 (76) and has added good boxing skills to his obvious power as a pro but so far for some reason Golden Boy have lead him down a single path towards the WBA. He is the interim WBA champion and ranked number 1 but is not inside the top 15 with any other organization. With these facts in mind it should be Mayweather that is forced to fight Thurman which is something the WBA would never do. If Brook does fight Thurman then he is doing him a massive favor. Kell Brook would be fighting for considerably less money than with Khan and with bigger risk to his title.
Marketability
This section is not meaning to have a go at Thurman its just simple fact. Most boxing fans in the UK are casual. Our main sport in Britain is football/soccer and you get some who would perhaps prefer cricket or rugby. In general boxing is a persons 2nd or 3rd sport at best. What that means is although there are lots of fans (eg 80,000 Froch v Groves) very few of them have an in depth knowledge of the sport as they just follow top fighters. I would guess that most Kell Brook fans wouldn’t know who Keith Thurman is. I recognize once again that this was probably the same for Kell Brook in the US before Saturday night. This is why pretty much every American from 140-147 calls out Amir Khan before Brook as 1. They know they will make good money fighting him and 2. They believe thy can knock him out. Brook was the opposite nobody knew him and didn’t want to risk losing to him. This is where Thurman is now especially in the UK. This is why I cannot see this fight happening and you couldn’t blame Brook if he didn’t in favour of more lucrative options like Khan or Marquez.
More deserving
I would agree that Amir Khan is no more deserving of a shot than Thurman, in fact much less so. Khan has fought one fight at 147 against a declining Luis Collazo and is also not ranked in the top 15 by the IBF. A Khan fight would be purely for the money. However there are surely fighters who are a lot more deserving than both Thurman and Khan. In the top 5 of the IBF you have the unbeaten Leonard Bundu (#2) who just beat Frankie Gavin and is 39 years old so deserves at least one crack. You have Tim Bradley (#3) who has only lost once to Manny Pacquaio and Devon Alexander (#5) who has been fighting at the top level for years and has wins over Junior Witter, Andreas Kotelnik and Argentine duo Lucas Matthysse and Marcos Maidana.
Other options
Thurman still has a lot of time on his side and it is important that he keeps active. If he doesn’t get the Brook shot then maybe he could look at fighting Shawn Porter. Robert Guerrero and Devon Alexander are also looking or big wins to get back to the top echelons of the division. Any of these wins would be very significant. As long as Thurman keeps winning he will get his world title shot and I think he will win one I just doubt it will be against Brook, not in the near future anyway.
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