By Dan Ambrose: Undefeated welterweight contender #4 WBA, Keith Thurman (20-0, 18 KO’s) is impatient to get a title shot against one of the welterweight champions after his impressive 12 round unanimous decision win over former IBF welterweight champion Jan Zaveck last Saturday night in Brooklyn, New York.
Thurman thinks the current welterweight champions are mainly just interested in facing smaller guys from the lower weight classes rather than fighting true welterweights like himself.
You can’t disagree with that in some ways because Floyd Mayweather Jr. is fighting a former lightweight, and WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley is fighting a light welterweight this Saturday against Ruslan Provodnikov, and WBA welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi is facing lightweight Adrien Broner on June 22nd.
Thurman says at the top of his list for who he wants to fight next is Bradley and Malignaggi. Thurman is now Bradley’s IBF mandatory challenger after beating Zaveck.
Thurman said to RingTV “He [Malignaggi] better fight him [Broner] or else he has to fight me. Paulie Malignaggi, and most of the other welterweights, don’t want to fight a true welterweight like myself. They’re all trying to fight lighter guys.”
Malignaggi has already made excuses for why he doesn’t want to fight Thurman saying that he doesn’t have a big enough name for him to want to take the fight. That makes sense because Malignaggi is clearly near the end of his title reign and he’ll likely lose his next fight to Broner.
It makes sense for Malignaggi to look to cash out why he still can rather than accepting lesser money and still ending up getting beaten in a fight with Thurman.
Don’t count on seeing Broner defending the WBA 147 lb. strap against Thurman if he gets by Malignaggi. I don’t see that happening. Broner will likely give up the WBA belt and move back down to the safe confines of the lightweight division ratehr than taking a risky fight against the bigger and stronger Thurman.
Broner would be too small for Thurman, and he’d likely be knocked out or at the least out-pointed. Malignaggi would just be flattened by Thurman. It wouldn’t be a fight. Malignaggi wouldn’t have the power to keep Thurman off of him.
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