By Chris Williams: WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (24-0, 21 KOs) will be taking home a cool $1.5 million tonight for his title defense against Gilroy’s Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (32-2-1, 18 KOs) in their fight on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Guerrero, an ex-two division champ, will be getting slightly less at $1.225 million. For Guerrero to keep getting nice little paydays of this kind, he’s going to need to defeat the hard hitting Thurman.
The only way Guerrero can do that is to back Thurman up, nail him constantly, and take the shots that Thurman throws in response. Thurman likes to back up constantly when his opponents come at him, so Guerrero is going to need to be ready for the kind of fight from Thurman.
Thurman needs to win this fight, and keep moving forward against the best fighters he can get. He wants Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao. But Thurman’s previous fights against lesser names is likely going to doom him in his wishes of getting the big names. The only way Thurman gets a fight against Mayweather or Pacquiao is if he fights nothing but the best from here on out. Beating Guerrero is a good start for Thurman, but he’s going to need better wins than this if he wants to fight the best.
Adrien Broner (29-1, 22 KOs) will be collecting $1.25 million for his 12 round fight against John Molina 27-5, 22 KOs). Broner is still in the rebuilding stage of his career after he took a beating from Marcos Maidana in 2013.
Broner’s adviser Al Haymon is supposed to be stepping him up against quality opposition in the near future. For Broner’s sake, Haymon will be finally be putting him in with a good opponent this year, because it’s already going on two years since Broner lost to Maidana.
Haymon is going to burn up Broner’s career in putting him in with 2nd tier opposition like Carlos Molina, Emmanuel Taylor and John Molina. As for Molina, he’ll be getting $450,000 tonight for his fight against Broner.
Abner Mares (28-1-1, 15 KOs), a former three division champ, will be getting $500,000 for his fight against 2nd tier fighter Arturo Santos Reyes (18-4, 5 KOs) in their fight scheduled for 10 rounds.
Reyes will be getting a mere $20,000. This is Mares’ third straight tune-up fight after he was knocked out in just one round by Jhonny Gonzalez in their fight in August 2013. Mares is supposed to be stepping it up later this year against the winner of the Gonzalez vs. Gary Russell Jr, but we’ll have to wait and see on that because it’s possible that Mares may wind up getting put in with someone else rather than the winner of that fight.
Mares is also a fighter who is burning up a lot of time in his career in facing weak opposition. You can understand one tune-up for Mares, which would have only cost him a half a year of career, but when you see him having three tune-ups, its burned up two years of his career, and that’s not a smart move on his part.
“Per Nevada commission, Sat’s PBC purses: Thurman $1.5M, Guerrero 1.225M, Broner 1.25M, Molina 450k, Mares 500k, Santos 20k #boxing,” Dan Rafael said on his twitter.
Comments are closed.