Jessie Vargas: Thurman should vacate his titles if he wants tune-ups

By Boxing News - 02/02/2018 - Comments

Image: Jessie Vargas: Thurman should vacate his titles if he wants tune-ups

By Dan Ambrose: Jessie Vargas thinks WBC/WBC welterweight champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman (28-0, 22 KOs) is holding his 147 lb. titles hostage by saying he wants to use 2018 as a “get-back” year in which he takes tune-up fights to slowly come back from his elbow injury that he suffered in 2017.

Vargas feels that if Thurman isn’t 100 percent healthy and not confident, then he should give up his titles by vacating them, and let healthy fighters compete for them. Vargas (28-2, 10 KOs) doesn’t like the idea that Thurman, 28, wants to take easy fights until he’s confident that his surgically repaired elbow will hold up under the heat of battle. Vargas is an old school fighter, who believes that champions shouldn’t come back if they’re not 100 percent. If they’re not confident that their body will hold together, then they should give up their titles rather than holding up the process by taking soft tune-up fights to gingerly work their way back to fighting world class opposition.

Vargas was less than pleased at hearing the news that Thurman decided he didn’t want to fight him on May 19th in his first fight back from surgery and a 14-month layoff.

“He wants an extremely easy fight,” Jessie Vargas said about Thurman to Fighthype. “The thing is you’re the WBC/WBA world champion. You can’t just say I’m a world champion now, so I can pick and choose the easiest fights out there. You’ve got to live up to the challenge and take the best opposition, which I am one of them. He has the title, but he doesn’t want to risk it anymore. As a champion, you shouldn’t have a problem fighting anybody out there, especially the top 5. That’s the problem he’s having. Now he sees the challenge very difficult and he doesn’t want to face me any longer. If you’re not ready to fight in that case, then vacate the belt and let somebody else fight for it until you’re 100 percent recovered and recuperated. That would be the best decision he can make if he doesn’t feel up to it. He should just let the titles go. When he’s ready to come back and fight, he can just come back and fight for the championship right away,” Vargas said.

I happen to agree with Vargas that Thurman should vacate his WBA/WBC 147 lb. titles if he’s not percent. But it’s obvious Thurman is not going to voluntarily give up his 2 world titles, because they validate him as a fighter. But it’s surprising that the WBA and WBC aren’t stepping in to strip the injured Thurman of his 2 titles for failing to defend them for over 1 year. The World Boxing Council has frequently changed the status of their champions to ‘Champion in recess’ when they’re injured and sitting on their titles like a goose sitting on an egg that they’re waiting to hatch. Boxers have short careers, and they can’t afford to be sitting and waiting for an injured champion to finish licking his wounds before he’s able to fight when out of the ring for over 1 year.

The sanctioning bodies should have stripped Thurman after he failed to defend their titles 6 months after his last defense against Danny Garcia on March 4th. If this was the NFL, the commissioner of the league wouldn’t let a team sit and rest for 1 year without playing. That team would be booted.

Likewise, the NFL wouldn’t let a team take a soft schedule just because they had some injured players that they wanted to take it easy with. It’s survival of the fittest in the NFL and should be that way in boxing as well. If Thurman can’t defend his WBA and WBC titles because of his aches and pains, then he should be stripped of his belts by the sanctioning bodies. It’s not fair to the fighters like Vargas that Thurman is able to hold onto his titles WITHOUT defending them for 14 months, and then when he does come back, he’s going to face soft tune-up opposition. That’s just wrong. You’ve to feel a little sorry for Vargas and all the other top contenders that have been forced to wait on the often-injured Thurman lick his wounds from his fight with Danny Garcia. If Thurman is allowed to devote an entire year to being a “get back” year, it sends the wrong message to the sport of boxing.

“A lot of fighters fight with injuries,” Vargas said. “Who did he fight? He fought Luis Collazo. He fought [Jesus] Soto-Karass, [Robert] Guerrero, who gave him a good fight; Guerrero was in the later part of his career. Danny Garcia, that was the fight that made him. But how many tune-up fights do you want. The only tough fight I saw him in was the Danny Garcia fight. You’ve got to stay at that level. You’ve decided that you don’t want to be at that level anymore. I don’t know if I see that attitude where he wants to continue to prove himself,” Vargas said.

Thurman can milk his WBA and WBC titles because those 2 sanctioning bodies are allowing him to do that. If they wanted to, they could have stripped Thurman for being inactive for 12 month period, and they could also insist that he fight a high caliber opponent instead of letting him milk his title against soft opposition. It’s their titles. If they want Thurman to take it easy, rarely defend the belts, and face weak opposition when he does fight, it’s up to them. It obviously is bad for guys like Vargas, who must sit and wait for ages for Thurman to fight due to his injury problems.

Thurman still hasn’t said who he’ll be fighting on May 19th, but it’s expected to be a bottom feeder in the WBA or WBC’s top 15 rankings. It could be someone even outside of the top 15. Look at WBC super featherweight Miguel Berchelt. He’s being allowed to defend his title against a fighter not even ranked in the top 15 in Maxwell Awuku. If the WBC is going to allow Berchelt to take a non-ranked fighter, then they might do the same thing with Thurman. If that’s the case, Thurman might end up holding onto his titles for a long time.

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