By Dan Ambrose: Heavy underdog Luis Collazo (36-7, 19 KOs) almost pulled off a huge upset last Saturday night when he caught WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (26-0, 22 KOs) with a perfect left hook to the body in the 5th round that knocked the air out of him causing him to double over in pain in their fight on Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN.
Thurman, 26, says he considered dropping to a knee for a brief count to recover from the body shot, but because he’s a champion, he didn’t want to be seen taking a knee. It might have made Thurman look bad in front of his fans at the USF Sundome Arena in Tampa, Florida.
More importantly, it might have made Thurman look bad in the eyes of Floyd Mayweather Jr., who still hasn’t made a public decision about who he’ll be fighting on September 12th. Thurman wants to get that fight with Mayweather, and it would have made him look bad to get dropped by Collazo, a fighter that Amir Khan easily beat last year.
“It was a perfect body shot that took 95 percent of the wind out of me,” Thurman said via thaboxingvoice.com. “I actually thought about taking a knee, but being the champion I am, I didn’t want to do that. But, it was probably the best shot I’ve taken in my career.”
If there was more time left in the round, Thurman might have been stopped. In that case, he would have been kicking himself for failing to take a knee. Fortunately for Thurman, he was hurt at the very end of the 5th round, and this enabled him to make it out of the round without getting knocked out or dropped.
With the body shot, Collazo noticed that Thurman always charged forward when throwing his pot shots, so he timed him and nailed him with a perfect left to the body when Thurman came forward in his predictable manner. Thurman could have avoided this kind of thing if he merely stayed in the pocket and fought Collazo like most fighters do, but Thurman showed very little heart to deal with Collazo on even terms by staying in the pocket.
Thurman is going to need to learn how to fight in a more stationary manner in the future if he wants to become a star because his style of fighting will likely lead to him getting booed badly in places like Las Vegas and New York. Thurman needs to be able to stand in the pocket like Mayweather does for him to win fans. If this means that Thurman needs to learn how to use the shoulder roll, then that’s what he should be doing, sooner rather than later.
Thurman’s running around the ring all night long is very similar to how Erislandy Lara fights, and it’s not a style that is fan friendly, even though Thurman occasionally throws pot shots. It just looks like he’s stalling out his fights by playing keep away the way some fighters do in the 12th rounds when they’re way ahead on the cards. Thurman does this the entire fight, and looks very strange.
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