By Eric Baldwin: WBC welterweight champion Danny “Swift” Garcia (33-0, 19 KOs) says he’s going to defeat WBA Super World 147lb champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs) for sure when the two of them face each other on March 4 at a still to be determined venue in New York. The Garcia vs. Thurman fight will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing on March 4. It should be a very good fight, and possibly better than Thurman’s match against Shawn Porter last summer.
Garcia, 28, is the underdog in this fight, but it doesn’t seem to bother him any. He believes he’s going to get the better of Thurman by breaking him down slowly and winning round by round. Garcia is one of those fighters that uses his ring IQ to get the better of his opponents. Garcia always finds a way to win.
Garcia said this to Fighthype.com about his fight against Thurman on March 4:
“I’m going to take one round at a time,” said Garcia about his fight against Thurman. “Whatever round I get him in, I’m going to get him, but I know I’m going to beat him for sure. Nah, man, I’m not going to lose, I’m going to win. Next week I’m starting training camp for the fight. The fight is March 4th. We haven’t got a venue yet,” said Garcia.
Thurman is seen by some fans and boxing writers as the best fighter in the welterweight division today. However, the 28-year-old Thurman’s narrow 12 round unanimous decision win over former IBF 147lb champion “Showtime” Shawn Porter on June 25. Thurman had a hard time with the consistent pressure that Porter put him under. Thurman won the fight by the scores 115-113, 115-113 and 115-113. Thurman was out-hustled much of the time, which is why the fight ended up being so close.
Thurman was able to get the better of Porter with his hard left hooks and his fast hands. Porter didn’t have the same speed or the same kind of pop on his punches. The fight showed that Thurman is a good fighter, but not that much better than Porter. If Garcia can do just a little bit better than Porter did by not making the same mistakes, he could very well beat Thurman. Porter lost the fight, but he exposed Thurman as being flawed and vulnerable to pressure. Thurman did well when he was the one doing the attacking. He was less successful when he was getting attacked while retreating, which he did a lot of in that fight.
Thurman wasn’t that active in 2016. He was out of the ring from July 2015 to June 2016. That was a big 11 month layoff, which was caused in part by him suffering a neck injury in an automobile accident. After Thurman’s fight against Porter in June, he chose to take the remainder of 2016 off rather than take a tune-up fight to stay sharp for the Garcia unification match.
For his part, Garcia took a tune-up against Samuel Vargas on November 12 and beat him by a 7th round knockout. That was Garcia’s second fight of the year in 2016. Whether Thurman’s inactivity will hurt him for the Garcia fight remains to be seen. It’s probably not the wisest thing for Thurman to have slowed his own boxing career down before such a big fight as this one.
Garcia may be the underdog in this fight, but he’s sharp right now and he could have an edge over Thurman in that department. Garcia always finds a way to win. If he starts falling behind in his fight against Thurman on March 4, you can bet that he’s going to start looking to catch him with his powerful left hook to take him out. Thurman has a vulnerable chin, and he can be knocked out.
We’ve seen Thurman hurt in a number of his fights against Jesus Soto Karass, Luis Collazo and Diego Chaves. If Garcia can time Thurman when he’s coming forward, he could nail him with one of his huge left hooks to get him out of there. Thurman likes to set his opponents up for left hooks as well, but he could find himself on the receiving end of one of Garcia’s powerful left hooks, because he likes to set the same kinds of traps.
Sugar Ray Leonard says he knew Bernard Hopkins wasn’t there when he walked to the ring for Joe Smith Jr. fight
Former world champion and Olympic gold medalist Sugar Ray Leonard says he could tell that 51-year-old Bernard Hopkins (55-8-2, 32 KOs) was going to have problems for his fight against the younger Joe Smith Jr. (23-0, 19 KOs) when he saw how Hopkins was making his ring way for his December 17 fight at the Forum in Inglewood, California. Leonard says he didn’t see the look of fire and confidence on the face of Hopkins. Leonard notes that Hopkins was coming off of a long layoff when he took the fight with the 27-year-old Smith Jr.
Leonard said this to Fighthype.com about Hopkins about his loss to Joe Smith Jr. this month:
“The most recent comeback fight was Bernard Hopkins, and Jose Smith,” said Leonard. “That fight didn’t turnout like Bernard expected. Back in the day, Bernard was the man; very positive, very confident, always in tremendous shape. I knew when I saw him walking around the ring, he wasn’t there. He didn’t have the eye of the tiger. He didn’t seem to be that confident. His punches were not with conviction,” said Leonard.
Hopkins put it on himself by electing to take on the dangerous puncher Smith Jr. without taking a series of tune-up fights first. That was clearly a mistake on Hopkins’ part. It was either a sign of Hopkins underestimating Smith Jr’s talent or him just having too much self-belief that he would be able to beat him based on the things he’d done in the past.
If Hopkins were a little younger, he probably would have made Smith Jr. look as bad as he did former middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in beating him by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision eight years in 2008. Smith Jr. was probably no better than Pavlik was, and maybe not even as good as him.
The difference here was that Hopkins was much older, and didn’t have the hand speed or seemingly the same power that he had when he fought Pavlik. If Hopkins knew that he didn’t have much left in the tank, then perhaps he just saw the fight as a last payday. But you’ like to have seen Hopkins take on someone much better than Smith Jr. if the fight was just a cash out. Hopkins vs. Artur Beterbiev would have been a good one. At least if Hopkins been knocked out by Beterbiev, he could say that he lost to someone who will likely be a world champion someday. I don’t know if you can say that about Smith Jr. He seems like a good slugger, but I don’t like his chances of ever winning a world title at 175. The current champions – Adonis Stevenson and Andre Ward – are too solid. Unless Smith Jr. targets WBA ‘regular’ champion Nathan Cleverly, I don’t think he’s ever going to win a world title.
Sergey Kovalev may have taken a lot of out of Hopkins in beating him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision two years ago in November 2014. The confidence that Hopkins had going into the Kovalev fight was a lot different than the confidence that he showed against Smith Jr. when he was walking out into the ring in my estimation. Yeah, Hopkins appeared to be very self-confident with Smith Jr. in their press conferences leading up to their fight on December 17, but that looked to be to be the false confidence that you get from someone trying to psych out their opponent and market a fight. Hopkins has always been good at selling his fights to the boxing public while at the same time getting into the minds of his opponents. Smith Jr. was too mentally strong to be psyched out. Moreover, Smith Jr. had seen enough of Hopkins’ last couple of fights against Kovalev and Beibut Shumenov to know that he could beat him. Shumenov should have never lost to Hopkins if he had not given him so much respect by failing to attack him. That was a case of Hopkins winning a fight by a more able-bodied and younger opponent using the wrong game plan.
I think Hopkins has been done for at least five years. Hopkins looked over-the-hill in his two fights against Chad Dawson starting in 2011. The first fight was a 2nd round no contest in which Hopkins was picked up and dropped on the canvas by Dawson. Hopkins complained that he couldn’t continue fighting. Dawson beat Hopkins easily in their rematch the following year in 2012. Hopkins won his next three fights against Tavoris Clous, Karo Murat and Beibut Shumenov. Cloud and Murat were not top level guys. Shumenov was a good fighter, but he fought a poor fight by staying on the outside and not attacking the much older Hopkins. If Hopkins had fought someone good after his loss to Dawson, I think he would have lost easily, but he wasn’t facing the dangerous guys like Kovalev or Artur Beterbiev.