Thurman says he’ll fight Errol Spence if Mayweather offers him $10 million

By Boxing News - 07/13/2015 - Comments

spenceBy Dan Ambrose: In a sign of how little interest WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (26-0, 22 KOs) has in fighting what many boxing fans see as the future of the 147lb division in undefeated Errol Spence Jr. (17-0, 14 KOs), Thurman said Floyd Mayweather Jr. should offer him $10 million to fight Spence Jr. on his undercard on September 12th. Mayweather already offered Thurman a spot on his undercard to fight Spence Jr. for one of his welterweight world titles.

Unfortunately for Mayweather and Spence, this doesn’t appear to be a good enough offer, because Thurman flat out turned it down, saying he wants the Mayweather fight. Thurman then said if Mayweather wants to offer him the Spence fight, then he needs to throw in $10 million to get him to consider it.

It’s unclear whether Thurman feels that the risk is too high to fight Spence or if this is the kind of money he thinks he would get if he were to face Mayweather. I think it might be more of a case of the risk involved with facing Spence, who is very powerful, very accurate and very talented. Spence, a 2012 U.S Olympian, sees weakness in Thurman’s game that he thinks he would immediately take advantage of if he could get the 26-year-old WBA champion to agree to a fight against him.

“Man, first of all, that’s game [for Mayweather to ask him to fight Spence on his September 12th undercard]. He’s playing games,” Thurman said at the post-fight press conference. “If he wants to offer anything, he can offer $10 million in his back account if he wants to offer something. Floyd fights for the money. He wants to make a good fight happen throw some dollars bills. He [Spence] needs to earn the shot. Have I not earned that respect in the welterweight division? Did I not climb up the ladder step by step, fighting whoever they put in front of me, fighting all the ex-world champions? How many ex-world champions has he [Spence] fought?”

You would think that Mayweather’s offer of one of his welterweight world titles to fight Spence would be enough to satisfy Thurman, but I guess not. It’s not enough for Thurman to get a shot at one of Mayweather’s titles, and it’s not enough to be fighting on an undercard where Thurman would be seen by millions of casual boxing fans who have never seen him before. The opportunity that Thurman has in being offered a spot on Mayweather’s undercard is priceless. Why would someone turn down a fight that would help make them a star if they were to win?

Additionally, if Thurman won the fight against Spence, he’d capture another world title at 147 that he could add to his collection. But of course, if Thurman isn’t confident about whether he could beat Spence, then it’s perfectly understandable why he would say no to the fight and ask for $10 million, or ask that Spence fight the past their prime ex-world champions that Thurman has fought such as Jan Zaveck, Julio Diaz, and Luis Collazo.

Even if Spence could get all three of those fighters to agree to face him, he wouldn’t get anything from knocking them all out one by one. Boxing fans would just say that he beat a bunch of old guys, which is what many boxing fans said about Thurman when he recently fought all of them. Spence gets nothing from facing the old guys that Thurman has been feasting on since he turned pro.

“That boy [Spence] don’t want it in the near future,” Thurman said. “His uncle Floyd, who adopted him, told him to state that statement. If he really wanted to state that statement, he wouldn’t have stuttered, okay? So let’s just be honest, aright? He is a young, talented young fighter. I sound like Floyd right now, right? Floyd wants me to fight a young man, someone my age. He don’t want me to beat upon the elderly. TBE is ‘To be Extinct.’ Let’s wave goodbye to the old man. I look forward. He’s [Spence] going to get that fight. As long as he’s here, he hasn’t fought a B-class fighter. He keeps fighting these one week replacements, these C and last minute replacements. Go ahead and fight Diego Chaves. Go ahead and fight Luis Collazo. Go ahead and fight any ex-world champion I’ve fought before you say my name out your mouth.”

I don’t think it’s possible for Spence to fight Diego Chaves now, because he’s with Top Rank, so Thurman needs to pull him off the list of fighters that he wants Spence to fight before he’ll give him a shot at his WBA title. Collazo now has a cut over his right eye that will likely take many months to heal, so it’s not going to work for Spence to try and fight him unless he wants to wait six months for the cut to heal.

I think it’s a waste of time for Spence to try and fight Thurman by getting a voluntary title shot, because it seems pretty clear that he wants nothing to do with him. Spence will likely have to work his way to the No.1 WBA mandatory spot before Thurman will agree to fight him. That might take a year or so for Spence to work his way to the No.1 spot. He just needs to chop down a couple of the top 10 counters, and he’ll be there.



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