(Photo credit: Suzanne Teresa/Premier Boxing Champions) By Dan Ambrose: After #8 WBA welterweight contender Errol Spence’s 3rd round annihilation victory over Phil Lo Greco (26-2, 14 KOs) last Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, promoter/boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. told the media that he’d like to see either the unbeaten Spence (17-0, 14 KOs) or Shawn Porter (26-1-1, 16 KOs) face WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (26-0, 21 KOs) on his undercard of his next fight on September 12th at the MGM Grand.
Spence, 25, is all for it, saying “Hopefully in September I can fight Floyd…err, Keith Thurman,” as quoted by ESPN.com.
Thurman has a fight next month on July 11th against Luis Collazo, but I’m not so certain that Thurman will want to get back inside the ring so quickly after that fight, even though it’s expected to be an easy one.
Thurman would need a lot of training time to get ready for either Porter of the southpaw Spence. Both guys can punch hard and they have really difficult styles to try and figure out.
With the kind of weak opposition that Thurman has mostly faced up to this point in his career, I don’t know that he’s ready to face quality guys like Porter or Spence. It’s too big of a step upward for Thurman. As a world champion, Thurman should be expected to face all the top guys, but it’s clear that he’s still kind of a novice at this point due to the easy match-making that’s been done for him his entire career.
Spence stopped Lo Greco in the 3rd round last night. Referee Robert Byrd stopped the bout at 1:50 of the 3rd round with Lo Greco still on his feet but hurt and taking punishment. The fight could have gone on a little while longer, but it likely would have resulted in Lo Greco getting dropped and stopped in that fashion. Before Byrd stopped the fight, Lo Greco had been recently knocked down by Spence from a right hand to the head.
Lo Greco showed a lot of toughness in getting up from the knockdown and taking further punishment, but he wasn’t going to be able to survive for very much longer. Spence was hitting him way too hard, too cleanly and too frequently for Lo Greco to have made it out of the round.
There were a couple of negatives in Spence’s game. His hand speed isn’t all that great, and his defense is poor. Spence was getting hit a lot by Lo Greco. However, Spence’s power was so good that it didn’t matter that he was getting hit, he was able to hurt Lo Greco with his shots. Spence’s hand speed was good enough for him to land his big shots.
Against a fighter like Thurman, Spence would have to stay on top of him and not let him run around the ring and box like he frequently does. Thurman does not like to stay in the pocket for long due to his chin problem. He prefers to land pot shots, and then get away to the outside to avoid the return fire. A guy like Spence might be good enough to cut off the ring on Thurman and force him to brawl.
It would be a 50-50 type of fight if Spence could trap Thurman into slugging with him. If Spence can handle Thurman’s punching power, then Thurman won’t last long against Spence. I’d say maybe 6 rounds tops. Spence hits too hard for a guy with a chin problem like Thurman. The only question is could Spence cut the ring in have to force the constantly fleeing Thurman into a fight? We saw how Thurman ran from Leonard Bundu and how he ran the last eight rounds against Robert Guerrero.
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