By Chris Williams: WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (25-0, 21 KOs) wants a big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) in the worst way.
Thurman, 26, says that Mayweather doesn’t have to pay him $80 million like the money Manny Pacquiao will be getting for his fight against Mayweather on May 2nd. Thurman says he’d be willing to take less than that, and that they could negotiate on the money.
Mayweather will have one fight left on his Showtime/CBS contract after the Pacquiao fight on 5/2, and Thurman would like to be the last fight for Mayweather.
Thurman seems to have taken over Amir Khan’s job as the guy who calls Mayweather out constantly in the media. Thurman wants that fight with Mayweather badly in order to get a shot at him before he retires from the game. Thurman needs Mayweather’s Midas touch to take his career to the next level, because the match-making that’s been done for Thurman since he turned pro in 2007 has kept him from winning over the casual boxing fans.
Thurman needs a fight against Mayweather, and he needs to beat him decisively for him to win over a lot of boxing fans at once.
“You can’t take over the welterweight division without facing Floyd Mayweather Jr,” Thurman said via UCN. “If he [Mayweather] wants to take on a top dog who’s rated E, ready to hurt him like he’s never been hurt before, then offer me a contract, baby. You don’t got to pay me $80 mil. You know what I’m saying? We can negotiate. If Floyd Mayweather wants to make me his last fight on his Showtime contract it’ll be an honor. I’d be looking forward to it, and I’d train my [backside’ off,” Thurman said.
With Thurman being an unknown as far as the casual fans, it doesn’t make sense at all for Mayweather to use up one of his last fights of his career fighting him. The only reason Mayweather would want to fight Thurman right now would be for charity in order to help his career.
That’s the only reason why the fight would make any sense at all, because Mayweather has bigger fish to fry instead of Thurman.
If Mayweather beats Pacquiao, he can always fight the Filipino fighter again next September, and make another huge bundle of loot. If Mayweather doesn’t want to fight Pacquiao again, he can always fight Miguel Coto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Those two fights would make Mayweather a lot of money, and both fights would likely bring in well over 1 million pay-per-view buys. You can’t say that about a Mayweather-Thurman fight. That would be like Mayweather fighting Robert Guerrero or Marcos Maidana again.
I doubt that it would even do that well, because Guerrero and Maidana were likely able to bring in a lot of fans to purchase their fights against Mayweather on PPV. I don’t know that Thurman could do the same thing. I think it would be a fight where Mayweather’s PPV numbers would take a huge hit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his numbers were the lowest in many years.
If Thurman wants a fight against Mayweather, he really needs to step up his level of competition. Fighting Guerrero last week was a good start for Thurman, but he now needs to fight Danny Garcia, Maidana, Lucas Matthysse, Amir Khan and Kell Brook. Until Thurman faces those guys and beats them all, he really doesn’t have any reason to be calling out Mayweather.
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