By Chris Williams: WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (25-0, 21 KOs) showed the boxing world that he’s for real last night in beating Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero by an impressive 12 round unanimous decision at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The victory by Thurman has some boxing fans thinking that Thurman is ready to beat Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao. Former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi isn’t saying that Thurman will beat those two superstars, but he definitely sees him as a big threat to beating both of them due to his power, hand speed and counter punching ability.
Malignaggi notes that Thurman is still a flawed fighter, but he thinks that in order to expose his flaws, you have to be willing to stand in the pocket against him for a long duration and risk getting hit by his big shots.
“He [Thurman] poses a big threat to both guys,” Malignaggi said via esnewsreporting.com. “He [Thurman] got a little ahead of himself [against Guerrero]. It’s a learning experience. I feel like a better fighter could take advantage of that, but to take advantage of that, you’ve got to have the balls to be in the pocket, to be in that range of his. He’s firing off so much power all the time, and that makes him dangerous.”
For Thurman to have a chance of beating Mayweather and Pacquiao, it’ll require that he stays in the pocket long enough to get his shots off. Thurman won’t be able to get a victory on the cheap over those guys by moving a lot, because no judge is going to give him rounds if he’s running against those two.
Last night in his fight against Guerrero, Thurman was really only effective when he was fighting in the pocket. When he was moving around and throwing pot shots on the move, he really didn’t do much other than waste energy.
Guerrero was able to avoid a lot of Thurman’s pot shots that were thrown while he was moving around. Besides that, Thurman started to look really tired in the last three rounds from the movement he was doing.
The sooner Thurman figures out that the movement really doesn’t help him in his fights the better off he’ll be. The thing is he’ll never be able to beat Mayweather and Pacquiao by moving constantly. He’ll miss with his pot shots, and he’ll only succeed in tiring himself out and making it easier for them to beat him.
I’m not sure that Thurman has the popularity enough to get a fight against Mayweather and Pacquiao. The winner of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight will likely go after Miguel Cotto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Those guys would give the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao winner a nice payday. Thurman still isn’t a PPV fighter yet.
While Thurman had problems with Guerrero at times during the fight, he was able to eventually hurt him with a right hand to the head to put the Gilroy based fighter down on the canvas in the 9th round. Guerrero survived the knockdown, but he posed no threat to Thurman the rest of the way.
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