By Dan Ambrose: WBA World welterweight champion Keith Thurman (25-0, 21 KOs) thinks he has everything to lose and nothing to gain in his title defense against Luis Collazo (36-6, 19 KOs) tonight at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa, Florida. The fight will be shown on Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN starting at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. ET.
Thurman sees himself in a situation where he won’t get any credit for beating Collazo, because he was already beaten badly by Amir Khan last year in a one-sided 12 round decision loss. Besides that, Collazo isn’t ranked in the top 15 by any of the sanctioning bodies, and he’s up there in age at 34.
If Thurman beats him, boxing fans will likely say ‘so what, you had an easy opponent. You should beat him easily.’ But if Thurman struggles to defeat Collazo or if he loses to him, then boxing fans will see Thurman as little more than a hype job who has compiled a resume filled with B and C level opposition. Thurman’s best wins have come against B level fighters Robert Guerrero, Jesus Soto Karass, Julio Diaz, Jan Zaveck, Diego Chavez and Leonard Bundu.
“It wasn’t what I wanted, but my team and I wanted to stay busy and active,” Thurman said to Fighthub about his fight against Collazo. “This fight, there’s nothing for me to gain. I can lose a lot of respect. There is a lot to lose depending on how my performance ends up. They can call me a hype job. Sometimes you have great fights and sometimes you just have fights. He’s got a good one-time. I think me and Shawn Porter will eventually be a great fight for the fans.”
Thurman had the chance to say no to the fight against Collazo when it was offered to him by his adviser Al Haymon. But instead of being assertive and saying no to the fight, Thurman readily agreed to take it. The thing is there were plenty of top 15 contenders in the welterweight division that Thurman could have agreed to fight instead of Collazo, but he opted to take this fight.
#8 WBA Errol Spence Jr. (17-0, 14 KOs) has been after Thurman for a while, but he wasn’t picked out for Thurman. So if Thurman wants to complain about his lack of an interesting opponent, then he should be blaming himself and his management because there were certainly better fighters out there for him than Collazo.
Speaking about Mayweather, “I don’t think he wants to fight me. He wants to see me and Errol [Spence] fight to see if Errol can beat me. Obviously, he believes in Errol’s skills and talent. I already know that’s going to be a good fight. If there’s a fighter that can beat me, I want to find out. My eyes are set on Mayweather. Let’s get through Mayweather. Let Mayweather announce his retirement, then I’ll go fight the next best competition, which possibly could be Errol Spence,” Thurman said.
Mayweather already said that Thurman needs to fight Spence Jr. on his undercard on September 12th, but Thurman wants no part of Spence. You can take that whatever way you want to.
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