Keith Thurman (Photo credit: Esther Lin/SHOWTIME) By Scott Gilfoid: WBA “regular” welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs) says he doesn’t plan on going out there and holding all night long against Shawn Porter (26-1-1, 16 KOs) in his fight against him on March 12 like Kell Brook did when he fought Porter in 2014.

Brook was holding constantly to keep Porter from throwing punches, and the referee was asleep at the wheel and just Brook hold all night without stepping in and doing his job to take points off and disqualify if need be. Thurman says he’s not going to follow the Brook holding blueprint when he faces Porter two months from now.

“If he [Porter] comes in too much people might think ‘is Thurman going to hold in the way that Kell Brook held?’ Thurman said to Michelle Joy Phelps to behindthegloves.com. “Normally, if you watch my fights, I’m not one that holds a lot. I don’t plan on holding Shawn Porter, I plan on beating Shawn Porter.”

It’s good to know that Thurman doesn’t plan on holding Porter all night long like Brook did because that was just gawd awful the way that Brook held him all night long. I can’t remember seeing so much clinching from one fighter in a world title fight in many years the way that Brook did.

It reminded me of an old Lennox Lewis fight that I watched on Youtube, where he was fighting some guy named Henry Akinwande back in 1997. Akinwande was tying Lewis up each and every time he came into punching range. Finally, after countless warnings from referee Mills Lane to Akinwande, he was forced to disqualify him in the 5th round for excessive holding.

The thing is the holding that Akinwande was doing was exactly the same thing that I saw from Brook. The only difference is the referee that worked the Brook-Porter fight didn’t do anything to stop the holding from Brook. As such, he was allowed to do his thing in the entire fight for 12 ugly rounds and he won the fight based on his ability to hold Porter to keep him from throwing punches. It was pretty sad because it was the same holding Akinwande was doing, but the difference was there wasn’t Mills Lane out there do a job to make sure the fight was fought on a level playing field.

When friends become foes … March 12. #ThurmanPorter pic.twitter.com/vgL1w8AfNU

— Keith Thurman Jr. (@keithfthurmanjr) January 24, 2016

Instead of clinching Porter like Brook did, Thurman says he’s going to try movement, counter punching and hitting him while he’s coming forward.

“There’s several things that we can do,” Thurman said. “We can hit him every, single time he wants to move forwards until, eventually, we get him to move backwards. We can use lateral movement, we can counter-punch. On paper he is definitely the best opponent to date,” Thurman said. “My toughest opponent to date? He will have to show that to me.”

Thurman needs to make sure that he doesn’t move too much, because he looked bad in his fight against Leonard Bundu in 2014. Thurman doesn’t need to lose fans in the process of winning fights. That kind of defeats the purpose because then no one will want to watch his fights on Premier Boxing Champions. Thurman needs to be more like Gennady Golovkin and less like Floyd Mayweather Jr. inside the ring if he wants to gain fans. Thurman will never have Mayweather’s hand speed or defensive talent. But he might be able to become a Golovkin like fighter in the 147lb division if he’d stop running so much and start moving forward to use his power to bang guys out of there as fast as possible the way Golovkin does.