By Tim Fletcher: According to reports, the much talked about contest between WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman and Showtime Shawn Porter is being moved to 2016 rather than taking place on December 12th like what was talked about. The Thurman-Porter fight could take place on Premier Boxing Champions on Fox Sports, according to RingTV.
The idea in moving the Thurman vs. Porter fight to 2016 is that it will give more time to build the fight to make it a bigger fight. If the Thurman-Porter fight were to take place in December, it wouldn’t give enough time to make it a huge fight.
There’s just not enough time to make it the huge fight that it deserves to be if they let the fight take place in just two months from now. It’s actually less than two full months due to October almost being over. There’s a possibility that the fight could take place on January 23rd, which is the first PBC fight of the year on Fox Sports.
By putting the fight off until 2016, it puts Thurman and Porter in the position where they’ll either need to take another fight before the end of the year, or end up sitting out until their fight. You don’t like to see young fighters like those two sitting idle for a long period of time.
Thurman-Porter is a good fight, but not really a huge fight compared to some of the fights out there. Thurman hasn’t faced anyone in the class of Porter, and it would be a huge step up for him. Thurman could fall on his face and wind up with his career taking a big hit before he’s even really done anything special.
We don’t know if Thurman can handle a guy Porter’s class because it’s a whole difference class of fighter compared to the guys that people have fought before. Up until now, Thurman has been facing B level fighters like Robert Guerrero, Luis Collazo, Julio Diaz, Leonard Bundu and Diego Chaves.
Thurman defeated former WBA welterweight champion Luis Collazo by a 7th round knockout last July. Thurman was hurt in the 4th round by a body shot and almost knocked down. Thurman ended up regaining control of the fight in the 5th and dominated the rest of the way. In Thurman’s other fight in 2015, he defeated a past his best Robert Guerrero by a 12 round decision in March.
Thurman had promised before the fight that he was going to stand and trade with Guerrero the first six rounds, but after Thurman took a lot of heavy shots in the first four rounds, he decided to get on his bike from the 4th through 12th in order to avoid taking any additional punishment.
Thurman showed in that fight and in his fight against Collazo that he doesn’t have the defensive skills or the ability to take punishment for him to stand in the pocket against the better fighters.
Porter defeated Adrien Broner by a 12 round decision in his last fight in June of this year. Porter did a good job of dealing with Broner’s fouling, movement and holding.
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