Keith Thurman vs. Jan Zaveck official for March 9th on Hopkins-Cloud undercard

By Dan Ambrose: The match-up between welterweight contenders #1 WBO, #3 IBF, Jan Zaveck (32-2, 18 KO’s) and unbeaten Keith Thurman (19-0, 18 KO’s) is official for the undercard of the Bernard Hopkins – Tavoris Cloud card on March 9th at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

This is potentially a good fight if Zaveck can hold up under the pounding of the bigger, stronger and younger 24-year-old Thurman. Zaveck, 36, is 12 years older, and 3 ½” shorter than the 5’11” Thurman, and that right there could be an obstacle for Zaveck to win.

He’s nearing 40, and facing a guy that will likely have a huge weight advantage over him in this fight. In Thurman’s last fight, which took place in the junior middleweight division against Carlos Quintana, he looked like a super middleweight in size, and that was just too much for Quintana to take.

Thurman, #4 WBA, ended up crushing Quintana in four rounds last November. Zaveck is smaller than the 5’9 ½” Quintana, and he’s going to have problems with Thurman’s huge weight and height advantage over him.

Thurman said “I’m going to go through Zaveck and then get my title shot [at 147].”

Thurman may not get a title shot against the current WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi until 2014, despite Thurman’s belief that he’ll be getting a title shot this year. There are currently three guys in front of him – Ed Paredes, Marcos Maidana and Diego Chavez, and Malignaggi is likely to string it out as long as possible until he defends his World Boxing Association title against the hulking Thurman, and that’s if Malignaggi doesn’t get beaten along the way by one of the challengers.

Thurman will get a chance against whoever that holds the belt by 2014, but it may be against someone like Andre Berto or Chavez instead of Malignaggi. It doesn’t really matter because Thurman matches up well with both Berto and Chavez due to his huge size and excellent power. What we don’t know about Thurman is how good of a chin he has. He hasn’t had to take too many shots thus in beating his opponents.