By Danny Esch: First a “journalistic” shout out to Nestor Gibbs of “Tha Boxing Voice” for acquiring the footage. The actual fight between Keith “ONE TIME” Thurman and Shawn “SHOWTIME” Porter will be on Sat June 25th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn New York on Showtime Boxing on CBS.
This is actually a real 50/50 fight between two young fighters in their primes willing to mix it up among this new boxing era of ducking and dodging between fighters not willing to take a loss. The champion Keith “One Time” Thurman a native of Florida U.S.A. has an unblemished record of 26w 0L at age 27 with an 81% knockout ratio.
The opponent that will be mixing it up with Thurman is none other than Shawn “ShowTime” Porter a ferocious “Mike Tyson” type of fighter with a great record of 26w 1L 1D at age 28 with a 57% Knockout ratio (Boxrec). The only loss that Shawn Porter acquired was against the U.K. Champion Kell Brook who we all thought would ride the wave of his success after defeating the American champion (at the time) Shawn Porter but for whatever reason has chosen not too.
This fight between Thurman and Porter is a very much highly anticipated fight because the two are not only fighters but also friends in this game of “The Sweet Science”. The two fighters promise the fans to keep it professional and put their “friendship” to the side the night of June 25th and they promise to put on a great show for the fans and the sport and CBS. Now for those unaware of the history between the two and the ups and downs of the negotiation process that has gone on to finally make the fight happen let me say it definitely wasn’t an easy process.
The Thurman vs. Porter fight was suppose to happen towards the end of last year with two different dates and on the second date, when we were all excited that it was a done deal Keith Thurman was injured in a car accident that derailed the fight once again. While Keith Thurman was in recovery and trying to get back as soon as possible team Porter went on camera multiple times to accuse Keith Thurman of ducking the fight. It seemed like most of the talking and jabs were coming from Shawn Porter’s dad and trainer Kenny Porter who seems to be the voice for Shawn Porter who exercised every opportunity to influence the YOUTUBE boxing community to believe that somehow his son Shawn was a terror to Thurman and Thurman was ultimately shaking in his boxing boots at the very thought of stepping in the ring
with Shawn Porter. As Kenny Porter was moving freely on countless boxing videos professing the “Fear” of Keith Thurman Kenny mentioned an alleged sparring video a few years back between his son Shawn Porter and Keith Thurman which in his own words proved that Shawn got the best of Keith during the whole sparring session. Kenny Porter also went so far as to say that Shawn was so dominating that Keith Thurman could not handle the pressure and ultimately turned his back and ran away against Shawn Porter in retreat due to the power and domination.
When knowledge of this reached Keith during an interview in Brooklyn Thurman confronted Kenny Porter and threatened to release the tape to extinguish the lies of team Porter. The tape can be found here posted to this article or on Youtube via “ThaBoxingVoice.com” and in my opinion I did not see Thurman turn his back and I did not see Porter overwhelming Thurman. I did see Thurman moving and dodging which is how he fights which is smart boxing to “Hit and not get HIT”. For those of you that watch keep in mind this Sparring match was 3 to 5 years ago and Thurman is wearing 20 oz gloves and they are both wearing headgear plus at the point of the sparring match Thurman had already gone about 4 rds with another fight before Shawn Porter. You guys be the judge.