Keith Thurman thinks Pacquiao and Mayweather fights are possible

By Boxing News - 06/29/2016 - Comments

Image: Keith Thurman thinks Pacquiao and Mayweather fights are possible

By Dan Ambrose: With his narrow 12 round unanimous decision victory over Shawn Porter on June 25, WBA World welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs) is talking about wanting to fight a unification match against WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia.

If Keith can’t get Garcia, then he wants to take on one of the other welterweights champions in IBF belt holder Kell Brook or WBO champion Jessie Vargas. Those two titles will be unified after Brook and Vargas fight each other in September, so there’s a possibility for Thurman to get two titles at once if he can face the winner of that fight.

Thurman also says he’s hoping to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. and/or Manny Pacquiao if they come back to the sport. Thurman says he’s hearing that Pacquiao might return. He would like to make that happen.

“Both of us can take one fight, and then why can’t we fight after that?” said Thurman to Fighthype.com about a match against Danny Garcia. “Are you not trying to progress in the welterweight division? Are you satisfied with only having one belt? How do you want to be a welterweight now and not want to fight Keith Thurman?”

Thurman has been doing a great deal of talking about the Garcia fight ever since his win over Porter. Garcia hasn’t been talking about Thurman though. Garcia has several options for nice payday fights against him against the likes of Amir Khan, Andre Berto and Adrien Broner. It’s quite possible that Garcia will fight all three of them one after another if he can keep winning.

It’s possible that Garcia could turn his attention to a unification match against Thurman or the winner of the Brook-Vargas fight once he gets those three fights out of the way. Thurman might be the last option though for Garcia, because there’s more for him to gain in fighting the Brook-Vargas winner for the IBF and WBO belts than it would be for him to fight Thurman for his WBA title.

When asked what he’ll do if he can’t get the unification match against Danny Garcia, Thurman said, “Go after another champion, man. [Manny] Pacquiao is talking about wanting to come back. Floyd [Mayweather]; maybe your boy ‘One Time’ might get a big name in the sport. We’ll see what happens. You never know,” said Thurman.

Thurman should know full well that a fight between him and the Top Rank promoted Pacquiao is pretty much impossible. Thurman is with Al Haymon, and the odds of him being able to work out a deal with Top Rank for a Pacquiao-Thurman fight are probably very low. If Pacquiao comes back, Top Rank will likely look to match him against one of their own fighters like Terence Crawford so that he can be turned into a star and can make big money for them for the next 10 to 15 years. If Pacquiao doesn’t fight Crawford, then Top Rank will look to match him against Mayweather or Danny Garcia.

Thurman said that he would be possibly interested in facing Porter again if the fight fans want to see a rematch between them. Thurman has now changed his mind about that. He wants to fight other guys rather than face Porter again unless there’s a huge demand for that fight.
“There’s a lot more action at 147 that I can get involved with. There’s more great fights to make in the welterweight division,” said Thurman to Fighthype.com. “It’s a fight that will be out there for the both of us, in my opinion, for the next year or two to come.”

It looks like Thurman will save the Porter rematch for later on in the same way that Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado chose to wait two years before facing each other in a third fight when both of their careers had gone downhill. Thurman barely beat Porter in a very close fight. It’s very possible that Thurman could lose when he faces the likes of Brook, Vargas or Garcia.

One name that Thurman isn’t mentioning right now is the unbeaten Errol Spence Jr. He’s on the verge of locking himself in as the IBF mandatory challenger after he faces Leonard Bundu on August 21 at Coney Island, New York. Spence could very well be the IBF/WBO welterweight champion by 2017, and Thurman will have to make a tough decision whether it’s worth it for him to take that fight.

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Thurman would need to walk the talk. He’s done a lot of talking about wanting to fight Danny Garcia, but you can argue that one of the reasons why he wants that fight is because Garcia has already been exposed several times by Robert Guerrero, Lamont Peterson and Mauricio Herrera. It’ll be a different story with Spence. This fighter is destroying everyone he faces, and he cuts off the ring against everyone he faces to force them to fight.

Thurman can’t run from Spence. He can try to run, but Spence will cut off the ring and batter him. Thurman likes to use a lot of head movement to keep from getting hit, but he’s defenseless to the type body shots that Spence likes to throw. Thurman was hurt by Porter with a body shot, and he was also hurt by Luis Collazo with a hard body shot last year in July. Those fighters didn’t throw a lot of punches against Thurman.

Spence surely will be looking to throw a huge amount of shots to the body, and he throws with major power one after another. It’s quite possible that Spence will ground Thurman with his shots to the body, and trap him into brawling. Thurman will try and run like he did much of the time against Porter, but it’s not going to work against Spence because he’s so good at cutting off the ring on his opponents.

Thurman needs to try and cash in on his success as fast as possible, because I think he’s going to get beaten by Spence in the near future. Of course, Thurman can choose not to face Spence in a unification fight by staying in his own lane as the WBA champion. Once Spence becomes a world champion, Thurman can elect never to fight him if he wants. The only thing Spence can do to force Thurman to fight him is to vacate his titles and then become Thurman’s mandatory challenger to try and force the issue.