By Dan Ambrose: Few boxing fans have heard of unbeaten welterweight prospect Keith Thurman (17-0, 16 KO’s), but he’s hoping that will change after he faces Marcos Maidana (31-3, 28 KO’s) in a 10 round bout next month on July 21st at the U.S. Bank Arena, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Maidana-Thurman fight will take place on the undercard of the battle between WBO super featherweight champion Adrien Broner and Vicente Escobedo. The Maidana vs. Thurman fight could steal the show if it’s as good a fight as I think it will be. Both Thurman and Maidana are major punchers. The only thing that I have questions about is whether Thurman will take a page out of Devon Alexander’s playbook by opting to clinch Maidana every chance he can get in order to keep him from getting his shots off. Alexander did that all night long against Maidana, and really should have lost points for what seemed like excessive clinching.

Although the 28-year-old Maidana is favored in the fight, Thurman has a real chance of pulling off an upset in this fight because of his size, speed, and youth advantage. Thurman may even be the bigger puncher of the two. We’ll see on July 21st if Maidana can punch with him, but in watching some of Thurman’s fights, he looks to be the stronger fighter.

Thurman told thaboxingvoice.com “I feel very comfortable with this fight. Maidana is one dimensional…I feel like I’m the favorite because of my technique, my speed, my power and I’m the bigger guy.”

This fight doesn’t make sense all. Maidana was just beaten by Alexander in a bout that took place at welterweight. After losing the fight, Maidana confessed that he didn’t feel like he had the size to fight at welterweight and would be moving back down to 140. But now Maidana is fighting another welterweight, but this an even bigger welterweight in Thurman. It just doesn’t seem like Maidana has thought this through properly. I can see things going badly for Maidana again, and him having to take another loss that could have been avoided had he moved back down to 140 and finally defended his WBA light welterweight title.