(Photo credit: Amanda Westcott/SHOWTIME)By Chris Williams: WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (26-0, 22 KOs) is calling his June 25 fight against former IBF 147lb champion “Showtime” Shawn Porter (26-1-1, 16 KOs) as the best match-up of 2016. We’ll find that out for ourselves if this is going to be a good fight or not because Thurman hasn’t fought since last year in July, and he hasn’t fought anyone good as of yet during his career.
For all we know, this fight could turn out to be a mismatch or a boring affair if Thurman decides to back pedal all over the ring to avoid getting hit by Porter. Thurman, 27, was involved in a traffic accident recently.
The injury caused the postponement of their scheduled fight on March 12. The time out of the ring appears to have caused Thurman to put on weight because in his meeting with Porter this week, Thurman appeared to be huge compared to Porter. As big as Thurman is, you have to wonder whether he can take the weight off to get back down to 147lbs without draining himself to the point where he’s weakened.
Thurman-Porter will be taking place at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York.
“I made you wait. But it’s worth it. This is a tremendous fight. Arguably the best matchup of the year. We’re going to work our butts off to make it the Fight of the Year,” said Thurman. “We took six weeks off after my accident, with three days a week of physical therapy. I was relaxing at home. I didn’t like it. As a fighter, I wanted this fight as bad as the fans wanted this fight.”
I think Porter will have little problems beating Thurman on June 25. Thurman doesn’t take punishment very well at all, and he’s very predictable in the way he fights. He likes to retreat and throw left hooks while backing away. Thurman is a pot shot fighter without the chin or the defense to stay in the pocket. We saw how Jesus Soto Karass and Diego Chaves both hurt Thurman when he tried to stay in the pocket against them.
Thurman said he was going to stand in the pocket with Robert Guerrero, and he couldn’t do it and had to abandon those plans by the 4th round due to Guerrero marking him up and causing his forehead to swell like a balloon.
If Porter is able to cut off the ring on Thurman and force him to slug at close range, then I see this as an easy fight for Porter. Thurman can’t fight on the inside and will likely tr and run and hold when the heat gets to be too much for him.
The winner of the Thurman vs. Porter fight will be in a good position to get a unification fight against WBC champion Danny Garcia. However, Garcia and his father/trainer Angel Garcia, might balk at the idea of fighting the winner of the Thurman-Porter fight.
A more likely fight for the winner of that fight would be against unbeaten Errol Spence Jr. (20-0, 17 KOs) if his manager Al Haymon doesn’t choose to put Spence in a IBF title eliminator against the Top Rank promoted Konstantin Ponomarev. Spence’s promoter Lou Dibella said recently that Spence will be in the audience for the Thurman vs. Porter fight as a potential opponent for the winner of that fight.
“I want to have two titles by the end of this year. People talk about replacing Floyd Mayweather, but you can’t become the man without beating all the people in front of you. One fight at a time. I want to stay at the top by grabbing another belt. I’m going to show that I’m the big dog at 147 pounds,” said Thurman.
It’s going to be tough for Thurman to show that he’s the best because that will mean he needs to beat Errol Spence, and he’s already turned down a fight against him once. To be the best in the 147lb division, Thurman can’t bypass Spence and start beating his chest as the best in the division if he can beat Porter and Danny Garcia.
I’m assuming that Thurman is talking about beating Garcia to win his WBC title when he speaks of wanting to win another title. He’s not likely to get a fight against IBF champion Kell Brook, and he can pretty much forget ever getting a unification fight against WBO champion Jessie Vargas, who is promoted by Top Rank.