Thurman says Mayweather avoided him

By Boxing News - 05/30/2016 - Comments

Image: Thurman says Mayweather avoided him

By Chris Williams: WBA World welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (26-0, 22 KOs) thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. avoided a fight with him when he was still fighting. Thurman appears to be still unhappy about it, and he doesn’t even want to discuss the topic of Mayweather because he doesn’t like the way things were done.

Thurman says the World Boxing Association elevated Mayweather to WBA Super champion at a time when Thurman was his #1 WBA challenger. The WBA then moved Thurman from contender to WBA regular champion, which meant he had to fight mandatory challengers and Mayweather didn’t, says Thurman.

By Mayweather being elevated to Super Champion by the WBA, it put him out of reach for Thurman, as he couldn’t force the fight like he would if he was the WBA mandatory challenger and Mayweather the WBA regular champion.

“I don’t care about him one bit. I did care about him before he announced his retirement,” said Thurman to Fighthype. “This is politics. Go back to the date he was declared the super champion. I got elevated to the WBA regular champion. The regular champion is obligated to fight mandatories, and the Super Champion has no obligation to fight mandatories. At the time, he wanted to fight Andre Berto, who at the time happened to be my mandatory for me, and not his No.1 contender because he has no such thing for a No.1 contender. If he did have such a thing, that body would have been me, Keith Thurman. So to me, I feel like I’ve been heavily avoided by Mayweather; neven wanted to be in the conversation. [I’ve] pretty much not getting acknowledged. So he’s retired and I really don’t want to acknowledge him. Floyd’s not going to be here for 10 more fights, but your boy Keith Thurman will be,” said Thurman.

I remember Mayweather giving Thurman a big chance to earn one of his welterweight titles by facing Errol Spence Jr. Mayweather didn’t say that he would give Thurman a chance of fighting him if he beat Spence, but you would have to think there was a possibility there. Thurman blew it by not taking Mayweather up on the offer of facing Spence because at least there was a chance that he might earn the fight.

I’m sure Mayweather had his reasons for not fighting Thurman. It could be that he didn’t see him as having a big enough fan base for him to want to bother taking the fight. It’s possible that Mayweather saw Thurman as more trouble than he was worth at the time. Thurman has a lot of punching power, and it would have been a potentially difficult fight for Mayweather.

Thurman’s fighting style which involved a lot of hitting and retreating might have been a style that Mayweather didn’t like. Thurman doesn’t stand in the pocket and fight like normal fighters. He tends to come forward, land something, and then move backwards or laterally to avoid getting hit.

Thurman does this same thing over and over again in his fights. He throws left hooks while retreating, and he sometimes will stop backing up and throw something, and then resume backing away. There are not too many fighters that like to face someone that doesn’t stand in the pocket and fight.

Mayweather would have had to stand and wait for Thurman to come at him in order to land his shots, because he wouldn’t fall into the trap of chasing Thurman around the ring because that’s what he wants his opponents to do.

If Thurman had the fan base of someone like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Mayweather would have fought him. It’s as simple as that. Without Thurman having a large fan base to create pay-per-view buys, he wasn’t worth the trouble.

Thurman needs to take some responsibility for not getting the Mayweather fight. A big part of the reason why Thurman likely never got a fight against Mayweather rests on the lack of high caliber opposition on Thurman’s resume. Thurman has been a pro for the past nine years, but he’s fought very few high quality opponents.

Here are the best fighters that Thurman has fought during his career:

Luis Collazo
Diego Chaves
Julio Diaz
Jesus Soto Karass
Jan Zaveck
Leonard Bundu
Robert Guerrero
Carlos Quintana

Those are fringe level fighters at 147. Thurman hasn’t been fighting the right guys to get a fight against Mayweather. That’s on him and his adviser Al Haymon. If Thurman wanted the Mayweather fight, he should have taken on the best fighters in the welterweight division in the past nine years instead of taking the safe fights.

Here are the guys that Thurman SHOULD HAVE fought if he wanted the Mayweather fight:

Marcos Maidana
Errol Spence
Andre Berto
Kell Brook
Tim Bradley
Amir Khan
Danny Garcia
Shawn Porter
Devon Alexander
Lamont Peterson
Lucas Matthysse
Terence Crawford
Ruslan Provodnikov