By Sean Jones: Keith “One Time’ Thurman (28-0, 22 KOs) says he’s not going to be fighting Errol Spence Jr. (22-0, 19 KOs) and Terence “Bud” Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs) in his next fight in early 2018, and he’s not sure when those fights will take place.
Of the 2 fighters, Spence has the better chance of facing Thurman soon than Crawford, as the Top Rank promoted Nebraska native still hasn’t fought at 147 and he’s got a lot of proving to do before he earns a shot against him.
There are a lot of people in boxing that think Thurman is flat out ducking Spence. They’ve seen how testy Thurman got 2 years ago when Floyd Mayweather Jr. suggested that he should face Spence to earn a fight against him. Thurman wanted the fight with Mayweather to be given to him without any strings attached by him having to earn it the hard way. Thurman reasoned at the time that Spence hadn’t done enough to rate a fight against him.
Thurman said he wanted to see how Spence would do against one of his past opponents Leonard Bundu first. But after Spence destroyed Bundu in 6 rounds in doing a far better job of beating him than Thurman had done, there was still no fight given to him by “One Time.” Around this time some boxing fans began to refer to Thurman as “Run Time,” due to him avoiding the fight with Spence instead of taking it head one for better or for worse.
Thurman, 28, is coming off an elbow injury, and he’s looking for a non-major test in his first fight back in early next year.
Spence, who holds the IBF welterweight title since beating Kell Brook earlier this year on May 27, wants the Thurman unification fight. Spence has wanted a fight against Thurman for 2 years now, but he’s been unable to get the Florida native to agree to a fight against him.
Speaking of a fight with Errol Spence, Thurman said to Fighthype, “I don’t know when the fights going to happen. I ain’t seen a contract. We got the same manager, but I never hear his name when we talk about business. When the phone call gets made, I don’t know when the [Errol Spence] fight is going to happen,”said Thurman.
We may not see Thurman vs. Spence for at least another year, as Thurman is expected to take a tune-up in the first quarter of 2018, followed by a rematch against either Danny Garcia or Shawn Porter. Both of those guys will almost surely get rematches against Thurman before Spence gets his chance to face him in a unification fight.
Thurman says he wants to fight 3 times in 2018. If that’s the case, then he’ll fight a tune-up level guy, and then Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter after that. Those would be the 3 fights Thurman takes next year.
“I am in the position of power,” said Thurman. “I don’t plan on abusing it. I will be using it, but I won’t be abusing it. I want to be back early next year and give you guys a good fight, and then we’ll go from there. Late February, early March, I’m aiming for that next year. You can’t rush it,” said Thurman. “When I get back, I want to try to be 100, really. I’m going to try and push out 3 fights next year,” said Thurman.
That doesn’t sound good that Thurman is talking about him being in the position of power when it comes to him making the big fights happen at 147. Thurman fancies himself as the replacement for Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Those guys were pay-per-view fighters. Thurman is still struggling to build a decent fan base in the U.S with the casual boxing fans. Thurman has a few things that are holding him back from becoming a star. Firstly, Thurman has only fought once a year since 2016. He’s not going to capture a huge fan base by fighting 1 time per year. Thurman needs to be a lot busier than that. Secondly, Thurman hasn’t fought anyone that the boxing world wants to see him fight. Thurman’s fights against Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia and Robert Guerrero were not huge fights.
Garcia has a fan base in the East Coast of the U.S, but he’s not been able to win over fans the other parts of the country. You can blame that on the soft match-making that Garcia has mostly done in the last 3 years of his career. He’s too many lower level fights against guys like Rod Salka, Mauricio Herrera, Robert Guerrero and Paulie Malignaggi. Thurman hasn’t fought the guys that he’s needed to for him to make the leap to the next level. Pacquiao and Mayweather chose not to fight Thurman. The one that Thurman needed to fight to increase his popularity, Errol Spence, he’s had no interest in fighting. Thirdly, Thurman doesn’t fight in an exciting style a lot of the time.
Thurman likes to use what he calls “circle boxing” in his fights to avoid getting hit. Thurman doesn’t stay in the pocket the way that Mayweather and other popular fighters do. Thurman likes to hit and then retreat. If Thurman’s opponents come after him, then he’ll start with the ‘circle boxing,’ which is very hard on the eyes because it’s so boring to watch. Since it’s unlikely that Thurman will ever stop using his circular fighting style, perhaps due to a chin issue, he needs to at least take the risky fights against Spence and Crawford. Porter and Garcia have already been exposed, and there’s no gain in Thurman fighting those guys.
There were recent rumors about Thurman possibly taking on Jessie Vargas in his tune-up fight in early 2018. Thurman says he hasn’t heard anything about that fight.
“I never heard about that,” said Thurman about the rumors that he could be fighting former 2 division world champion Jessie Vargas in early 2018. “I ain’t seen a contract from nobody on it. It shouldn’t be a major fight when I come back. Early next year, but then we should be able to make some good things happen after that next year, and I’m looking forward to it,” said Thurman.
I don’t think it’s realistic that Thurman will fight Jessie Vargas anytime soon. It’s unclear whether Vargas is a free agent now. He was with Top Rank recently. If Vargas’ contract is up with Top Rank, then that would give him at least a small chance of fighting Thurman. However, Vargas is not an easy mark, especially now that he’s sitting down on his punches a little more. Vargas would be tough fight for Thurman even if he were in perfect health and not coming from an elbow injury, Vargas would be a tough out for him, and I’m not sure that he would welcome this high risk, low reward type of fight. The problem that Thurman has is he’s getting kind of risk aversive at this point in his career. He seems to feel he’s got it made and accomplished everything after beating a handful of moderately good fighters. Thurman’s wins over Danny Garcia, Guerrero and Porter seem to have planted ideas into his head, making him believe he’s the best fighter in the 147-lb. division rather than an injury prone fighter that has won a lot of fights against hand-picked opposition.
“He moved up a weight class and he dominated 140,” said Thurman about Terence Crawford moving up from the lightweight division several years ago to dominate the light welterweight division. “There isn’t a tremendous amount of [talented] fighters at 140, because a lot of them already migrated to 147. The beauty of 147 is we’re the biggest of the small men. It’s not that it can’t be done. It’s just not that easy to do,” said Thurman about Crawford moving up to welterweight and dominating in that weight class like he’d done at 140. “We have weight classes for a reason. Crawford has good height and good reach. When you have height and reach, you can move up a division. Some people can move up and they can hang. Terence Crawford feels he can do that. I know he wants to fight me right away. That isn’t happening. I got to come back from this injury. There’s a long list of fighters that want to fight Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman. Maybe I’ll put the names on a dice piece and roll it and see what happens, but they’re going to happen one fight at a time,” said Thurman.
In other words, Thurman isn’t about to take any risky fights anytime soon against Crawford or Spence. It’s easy to read Thurman. He’s not going to take a risky fight with Crawford. He’s going to make him earn the fight against him by winning a lot of fights, proving himself slowly, and then maybe he’ll get the fight. I think this is a mistake on Thurman’s part in not taking the Crawford fight right way. The reason it’s a mistake is because Thurman doesn’t have the talent or the physical durability for him to remain a world champion for much longer without getting beaten or injured to the point where he needs to be stripped of his titles by the sanctioning bodies.
Thurman seems to pig out in between fights, and he gets heavy with the double chin and all that. Thurman may not realize this, but it’s hard on a fighters’ body to take off a lot of fat when they start training. Fighters can get away with putting on a lot of fat early in their careers, but when they reach their late 20s and early 30s, they start having problems taking the weight off and fighting at an important level. I don’t see Thurman being able to continue packing the fat on and then losing it for much longer before he starts getting beaten. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thurman loses his next fight, even against a handpicked weak opponent.
“I look forward to continuing my legacy and dominating the welterweight division,””I’m 28-years-old and it doesn’t feel good to not be an active fighter while you’re in your prime,” said Thurman.
I hate to rain on his parade, but Thurman isn’t dominating the welterweight division. He’s barely squeaking by his opposition. Thurman’s last 2 fights against Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter were won by razor thin margins. Before that, Thurman was badly hurt with a body shot from Luis Collazo in their fight on July 11, 2015. Thurman won the fight by a 7th round stoppage, but that was far from a dominating performance from “One Time.”
“I don’t think that I will take that level of a fight [against Shawn Porter] coming off my injury,” said Thurman. ”I think we’re going to just get a welcome back fight. Throw the arm around, test it out, have an injury-free camp, take the momentum from that and we can possibly get in the ring with Shawn after that.”
I’m wondering how low level the opponent will be for Thurman’s next fight in early 2018. Surely, it’s got to at least be a contender ranked in the top 15 for the World Boxing Association and/or WBC to sanction the fight. Thurman can’t bring in a stumble bum or some novice MMA fighter to pad his record with like we saw with Floyd Mayweather Jr. recently in his mismatch circus event fight against UFC star Conor McGregor. I would hope that the sanctioning bodies don’t let Thurman do what they allowed Danny Garcia to do when he was the WBC light welterweight champion in picking out a lightweight in Rod Salka to fight in a non-title fight. The WBC let Garcia freeze his 140-lb. title so that he could fight Salka at a catch-weight of 142 lbs. on August 9, 2014. Garcia didn’t get stripped of his WBC title despite him fighting out of the light welterweight division.
“I look forward to that [potential] fight against Errol,” said Thurman. ”I look forward to great competition and Errol is that. This is a fight that you guys have been talking about, you won’t stop talking about, and you should keep talking about it because when it goes down it will be one of the best fights of this generation.”
The boxing media and fans have been talking about the Thurman vs. Spence fight because it’s the best one in the 147-lb. division right now. Until Crawford starts fighting at 147, Thurman vs. Spence is the best fight in the division. It’s old hat for Thurman to fight Danny Garcia and Porter again. He’s been there and done that. The boxing world knows what the outcome will likely be in those two fights.
“Everyone thinks they know who the real champion is. But real talk is that the king of the welterweight division will manifest within one to two years,” said Thurman. “[Terence] Crawford has whacked up a lot of people, but he hasn’t whacked up a welterweight yet. He still needs to make himself relevant in this division. He’s a 140-undisputed champion. He can come up to this weight division and fight anybody in the top 10 and he deserves that. But we are so flooded with talent he is going to have to make himself relevant at 147 before he gets his hands on us.”