By Chris Williams: WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (25-0, 21 KOs) is hoping to get a big money fight against superstar WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) in the near future.
Thurman believes that he’d give Mayweather a lot of problems at this point in his career. Thurman says Mayweather is old, and that he picks and chooses his fights rather than fighting everybody.
“Floyd is a beautiful fighter, he’s a beautiful athlete,” Thurman said via Fighthype. “He’s one of the most accomplished fighters in the world of boxing today, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he’s an old man. That doesn’t excuse the fact that he picks his fights. Me and Floyd Mayweather; I’ll be the toughest fight of his whole career,” Thurman said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm_eLWldLCw
From what I saw of Thurman’s last fight against Robert Guerrero, I think he’d be an easier fight for Mayweather than his fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Marcos Maidana. Thurman’s game is too predictable, and he’s too slow. He can’t fight in the pocket, and he tires out when he moves around the ring. He was able to hit the slow as molasses Guerrero with his pot shots, but he’d be hitting air against Mayweather.
I don’t think Mayweather will ever waste his time fighting Thurman, because it’s taking Thurman too long to build up a large fan base. He’s still not a pay-per-view fighter, and his constant movement makes his fights less interesting to watch.
If Thurman would stop moving all the time, he would be a lot more interesting to watch, but as we saw in his fight against Guerrero, Thurman is dependent on movement. He bruises up badly when he stands in the trenches because he doesn’t have great defensive skills, and his chin isn’t that great either. But by the time Thurman does pick up a large fan base, if he ever does, Mayweather will have retired from boxing.
There’s no point in Mayweather fighting Thurman because he brings nothing to the table due to him still not being a well-known fighter in terms of being known by casual boxing fans.
Thurman’s adviser Al Haymon needs to put him in fan friendly fights against Amir Khan, Kell Brook, Danny Garcia, Lucas Matthysse, Marcos Maidana and Shawn Porter. Haymon also needs to sit Thurman down and have a long talk with him to tell him to stop moving so much, because he’s turning off fans with his movement.
Thurman, 26, can only hope that he’ll still be fighting at a high level when he reaches the age of 38 like Mayweather.
I seriously doubt that Thurman will be a major player when he’s 38, because once he loses his hand speed and foot speed, he’s going to be stuck having to fight the sluggers in the trenches. I don’t think Thurman’s chin is good enough to win in toe-to-toe battles, especially by the time he’s 38.
Thurman was said to have rehydrated up to 162 pounds for his recent fight against Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (32-3-1, 18 KOs) on March 7th. Thurman won that fight by a 12 round unanimous decision after knocking Guerrero down in the 9th round. But that was far from an easy fight for Thurman. He had problems with Guerrero when he was trying to stay in the pocket with him in the first half of the fight. It wasn’t until Thurman started moving that the fight got easier for him, but it still wasn’t an easy fight.
With Thurman rehydrating up to 162 after the weigh-in, one question is how much longer can Thurman make the welterweight limit of 147? It seems that he should be fighting at 154 rather than 147. If Thurman is rehydrating up to 162, which is super middleweight, then it stands to reason that Thurman should be fighting in the 154 pound division at the minimum. He gained 15 pounds after rehydrating for the Guerrero fight.
It’s not going to be long before Thurman has to move up to middleweight in the future, because he’s already pushing the boundaries of the junior middleweight limit.
I don’t think Thurman will do well once he starts having to face guys like Gennady Golovkin, Peter Quillin and Daniel Jacobs. Those are guys that Thurman will need to be facing once he’s grown out of the welterweight and junior middleweight divisions.
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