Thurman: I’m looking forward to destroying Mayweather

By Boxing News - 12/12/2014 - Comments

Keith Thurman(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Chris Williams: With interim WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (23-0, 21 KOs) pretty much a forgotten man on the Amir Khan vs. Devon Alexander card, Thurman took efforts to make himself heard on Friday by calling out WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr in order likely to get some badly needed attention.

Thurman obviously is a million miles away from getting a fight against Mayweather thanks in large part to the poor match-making that Thurman’s adviser and promoters have been doing for him. Instead of facing the high quality opposition in the welterweight division, Thurman’s management has kept the training wheels on him by matching him against weaker opponents.

As a result, Thurman is in no position to call out Mayweather and realistically have any chance of getting a fight against him. However, that’s not stopping him from still giving it a try by opening his mouth to make himself heard along with the many other fighters that are calling out Mayweather.

“Floyd is supposed to be TBE (the best ever) and I want to fight the best,” the 26-year-old Thurman said at the weigh-in as quoted by Fightnews.com. “I want to fight the man. It ain’t like Floyd’s gonna knock me out. When has Floyd knocked ANYBODY out in the past several years? So if anybody should be scared it should be him. If anything I’m gonna do, I’m going to get a great learning experience in my career. And to be honest, I’m looking forward to destroying Mr. Floyd “Money” Mayweather. I have a motto: “Burn Money.” In 2015 we’re getting ready to burn Money!”

Mayweather has just a handful of fights on his Showtime contract, and it’s not likely that he’s going to burn one of them up fighting Thurman, who doesn’t have a large fan base. If Mayweather wants to burn up a fight facing a guy without a fan base than he has plenty of other fighters he can do that against. Thurman needs to build a fan base and a resume before he starts talking about wanting to fight the likes of Mayweather.

Thurman will be fighting on Saturday night against unbeaten 40-year-old Leonard Bundu (31-0-2, 11 KOs) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Thurman-Bundu fight will be staged on the Khan-Alexander card. It’s a good fight for Thurman to pick up more badly needed experience, but it’s not a good fight for Thurman to use to springboard off of to start requesting a Mayweather fight.

As for Thurman destroying Mayweather, it’s nothing but a pipe dream on Thurman’s part because he won’t get the fight against him due to Thurman’s management failing to match him against high enough caliber opponents for him to be asking for a fight against Mayweather.



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