Sulaiman ordering Danny Garcia vs. Shawn Porter for interim WBC 147lb. title

By Boxing News - 04/05/2018 - Comments

Image: Sulaiman ordering Danny Garcia vs. Shawn Porter for interim WBC 147lb. title

By Allan Fox: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman will be ordering a fight between #1 WBC contender Danny Garcia and #2 Shawn Porter for the interim WBC welterweight title due to champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman being out with a hand injury and unable to fight on his previously scheduled May 19th date. Thurman wasn’t planning on fighting either of those guys anyway. He was going to take a tune-up bout before facing Porter or Garcia later this year.

The WBC might be wasting their time if they order the Garcia-Porter fight. Garcia and his father Angel tend to call their own shots in terms of who they want to fight. They’re not likely to agree to a fight against Porter, which would be a very difficult one for them.

Garcia won his last fight against the shopworn Brandon Rios in stopping him in the 9th round on February 17, but that was a mismatch on paper. There was no risk involved for Garcia, and Showtime Boxing was willing to televise the mismatch.

Garcia vs. Porter is no mismatch. There’s a real risk that Garcia loses that fight, and for that reason I don’t think he’ll even consider it for a moment, even though it’ll put him in the position to be crowned the WBC full welterweight champion if Thurman keeps getting hurt.

I think it’ll be a miracle if Garcia accepts the Porter fight. I just don’t see Garcia agreeing to fight his way to a title shot rather than having it given to him by Thurman. That’s what Garcia is waiting for. He wants the rematch with Thurman, and he’s probably not going to agree with the WBC to have to go through Porter in order to get that fight.

The thing is, if Garcia does become WBC champion again, he’ll have to fight Porter anyway, but I think he’d rather not have to fight him until he becomes the champion. The WBC made it easy for Garcia to win their 147 lb. title in 2016 by bypassing Porter and letting Garcia fight Robert Guerrero for the vacant WBC welterweight belt. It looked strange the way the WBC had Guerrero fight Garcia for the vacant WBC title rather than ordering Garcia to face Porter.

Guerrero was ranked below Porter at the time. After beating Guerrero to win the WBC 147 lb. strap, Garcia was allowed to freeze his title and take a fight against fringe contender Samuel Vargas with the WBC belt not on the line for the fight. In Garcia’s next fight, he lost his WBC strap in a unification fight against Thurman last year in March.

The 30-year-old Porter (28-2-1, 17 KOs) is the WBC mandatory challenger for Thurman, and he’s been waiting for Thurman to get around to fighting him since last year. Thurman suffered an elbow injury in his 12 round split decision win over Danny Garcia on March 4, 2017, and he’s been out of action since then after having surgery to repair the problem. The World Boxing Council usually moves quickly to change the status of their injury champions to WBC emeritus champions, but for some reason they’re not taking that move with Thurman despite the fact that he’s now been out of action for 13 months and likely will be inactive for another 2 months at the minimum.

If Thurman does come back after a 15 month layoff, it’s a long time to go between making title defenses of his WBA and WBC welterweight titles. But perhaps if the Porter-Garcia fight takes place, then winner can be elevated to the WBC champion and Thurman can put demoted to emeritus level. That would be the best move for the WBC to make, because Thurman’s injury problems aren’t just negatively impacting his own boxing career. They’re also hurting the careers of the contenders that are waiting for him to get healthy enough to defend the belts on a regular basis.

“Unfortunately, he [Thurman] has been injured again. He cannot continue as a champion, and he has not defended the title for more than a year,” Sulaiman said of Thurman. ”We had been consistent with him after the injury he had but with this new injury it is very possible that the fight is ordered for the interim between Porter and García who are the two mandatory challengers,” Sulaiman said.

Thurman’s latest injury is expected to delay his ring return for another 6 weeks. So instead of Thurman returning to the ring on May 19, he likely will be out of the ring until July unless something else happens with him. The good news is Thurman didn’t have an opponent scheduled at the time he suffered the injury, which gives you an indication that he was going to be matched against a soft opponent.

Thurman is still expected to face a weak opponent when he does eventually return to the ring. You can argue that Thurman’s 1 year absence from the ring should put him in the position to where he needs to fight a mandatory challenger when he does return. It’s not fair to the guys that are waiting for Thurman to have to sit and wait patiently for him to get healthy.

Porter is coming off of a 12 round unanimous decision win over Adrian Granados on November 4 last year. It was a good win for him in a fight that was competitive. That wasn’t an easy fight for Porter, but he did what he had to do to get the ‘W’ in the fight.

Sulaiman might as well just say the winner of the Garcia vs. Porter fight will be the new WBC welterweight champion, because Thurman’s situation is not looking good with him still sitting inactive because of his injury problems. Thurman is a good fighter when he’s healthy, but he’s only been healthy for 1 fight per year for the last two years. That’s why some boxing fans are now calling Thurman by the new nickname, ‘One Time per year. The way things are looking now, Thurman fighting in 2018 isn’t a guarantee. He might be better off giving up the belts, and letting 2018 be his ‘get back year’ where he sits around and licks his wounds before ramping up in 2019.