By Allan Fox: #4 WBA, Keith Thurman (20-0, 18 KO’s) is looking good right now to beat undefeated Diego Chaves (22-0, 18 KO’s) to claim the interim WBA welterweight title this month on July 27th at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas.
Thurman, 24, has most of the advantages in this fight against the 27-year-old Chaves. Thurman is taller, stronger, faster, better defensively and a little more experienced against better opposition than Chaves.
The only thing we don’t know about Thurman is how he’ll handle his first real puncher of his career. Chaves hits harder than the guys that Thurman has been facing, and we’ve already seen that Thurman can be hit.
He definitely gets hit, but he’s not faced anyone with the kind of thumping power that the Argentinian Chaves brings to the table in this fight.
Thurman can put himself in position to go after the WBA welterweight title if he can beat Chaves. Adrien Broner is the champion at the moment, but he’s likely to give up the belt rather than face Thurman and/or Marcos Maidana.
This means that we could see Thurman and Maidana going at it to fight over Broner’s WBA strap once the young fighter makes up his mind that he simply doesn’t have the size to compete against the likes of Maidana and Thurman.
Thurman has looked really great in his last two fights in beating Carlos Quintana and Jan Zaveck. Those were impressive performances. He couldn’t get the knockout against Zaveck because the former champion went into survival mode after tasting some of Thurman’s power early on, and he just looked to finish the fight on his feet rather than putting in a huge effort to try and win it. Quintana was run over by Thurman and stopped in four quick rounds.
What Chaves has going against him, besides his lack of size and hand speed, is that he’s fought mainly in Argentina and hasn’t had the chance to fight the same kinds of quality fighters that Thurman has.
Comments are closed.