By Danny Esch: Last Saturday night over 2 million viewers witnessed two great welterweight fighters in the prime of their careers in the squared circle putting on a great performance with WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs) defeating Shawn Porter (26-2-1, 16 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The fight was televised on Premier Boxing Champions on CBS on primetime.
We should all congratulate both camps for putting in the hours of intense training and major sacrifices to travel from their respective homes to Brooklyn New York to put on a memorable performance. In my opinion this fight definitely lived up to the hype that was surrounding it. Thurman and Porter both came to the fight to win and both fighters came to present their “A” game to be victorious over the other.
It was very interesting to see that there were no remnants of a close “friendship” relationship between the two guys which was key factor in the build up to the fight. Keith and Shawn were very professional and they both kept their promise to leave their “friendship” in the locker room on fight night which is what we all witnessed. I have read multiple articles highlighting certain aspects of the fight but some writers missed other important aspects of the fight.
I did witness the ferocity of Shawn Porter and the way he bullied Keith Thurman on the ropes and the tremendous body work Porter unleashed on Thurman. Shawn Porter was clearly on a mission to give “One Time” his first loss and relinquish him of the WBA title. In multiple videos on YouTube the Porter camp open it’s doors to the viewing public to introduce us to their new technologically sound training facility called the “Porter High Performance Center”.
In my opinion this is a top of the line training facility for any boxer including Floyd Mayweather and Kenny Porter the father and trainer for Shawn Porter assured us that all of the “Work” has been done and they had many “questions” for Keith Thurman on fight night.
At the same time that Shawn was being ferocious in the ring I also witnessed a brilliant display of boxing on the other end in Thurman’s corner. I believe Thurman surprised all of us that were watching and the Porter’s themselves by what he brought to the ring on fight night.
There were many writers and media outlets along with the Porter camp that said Thurman was totally afraid of Porter and that on fight night he would run and run all night long and Thurman would not stand in the pocket at all and trade shots with Mr. “Show Time”. At this point now that the fight has come and gone I can say now that Thurman made all of those people eat their words because what we saw was Thurman not only staying in the pocket but through much of the fight he was actually walking Porter down and he totally rocked Shawn Porter with his left hand in round 4 and again in round 10.
The left hook of Thurman was present all night as previously stated in round 4 Shawn Porter’s knees completely buckled and he grabbed and clinched Thurman immediately. In round 10 also the left hand landed and Shawn Porter stumbled to the side but was able to recover. Porter definitely made this an ugly fight also by holding, clinching, head locks and one low blow in the 3rd round but Thurman was still able to fight through all of the Porter camps pressure.
Surprisingly, no one from the Porter camp was around for the post-fight Press conference after months of TV time they utilized to promote themselves and it turns out that Shawn was sent to the local Hospital for a “dehydration” issue but Shawn has yet to be seen on camera and it my opinion it was due to the hard shots he took against Thurman.