By Dan Ambrose: Amir “King” Khan doesn’t think too much of the fighters that WBA World welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs) has built his resume on during his 10-year pro career. Khan says that Thurman has been knocking out bums during his career.
Thurman, 28, will be fighting in two months from now against WBC 147lb champion Danny “Swift” Garcia (33-0, 19 KOs) on March 4 at a still to be determined venue in New York. The fight will be televised on Premier Boxing Champions on Showtime.
Khan is picking Garcia to win the match. He’s hoping Garcia wins, because he previously knocked Khan out in the 4th round five years ago in 2012. For some reason, Khan and Garcia never fought each other again despite the huge interest from the boxing world in seeing a second fight between them.
“I think Garcia will win that fight,” said Khan to Fighthype.com about the Garcia vs. Thurman fight. “I don’t think Thurman has fought anyone who is dangerous. I hope Garcia wins, because then I get to fight him for all the titles.”
Khan is thinking of fighting Kell Brook. If he does that fight and lose, then he would be out of the equation for fighting the winner of the Garcia vs. Thurman fight. Khan needs to win his tune-up fight in April and then beat Brook in order to remain in the hunt to face the Thurman-Garcia winner.
Garcia isn’t expected to win against Thurman. Many boxing fans think Thurman will get the better of Garcia with his faster hands, feet and combination punching. Thurman is very hard to hit unless you can time him. Garcia isn’t particularly fast when it comes to his hand speed. If he’s going to be able to hit Thurman with anything significant, then he’ll need to time him when he’s coming in.
Thurman likes to come forward and throw single right hands a lot of the time. If his opponents try and hit him with something, he’ll then throw a left hook and retreat. He does this move a lot, and it’s usually effective. Luis Collazo was able to hurt Thurman with a body shots in their fight two years ago in July 2015. Thurman recovered from the shot, but he was there for the taking if Collazo had more talent and power.
Khan is rated No.1 with the World Boxing Council. With that rating, he’s got the option of fighting the winner of the Garcia-Thurman if he wants it. Khan seems to be more interested in facing Garcia than Thurman. It’s unknown if Khan will pass on fighting the winner of Thurman emerges as the winner of that match. Unbeaten Errol Spence Jr. (21-0, 18 KOs) has been vocal about his interest in facing the Garcia vs. Thurman winner. However, for Spence to get a chance at fighting one of those two guys, he’s going to need to capture the IBF 147lb. title, which is held by Kell “Special K” Brook at this time.
Brook might not face Spence though. If Brook does, then the fight might be dragged out until April. There’s a purse bid scheduled for the Brook-Spence fight at the end of February. A fight between the two would likely take place one to two months later.
Speaking about Thurman, Khan said, “He’s good at knocking out bums and tin cans. If he knockouts Garcia and beats Garcia in a good fashion, then I’ll say you got my respect. The thing is he hasn’t beaten anyone,” said Khan about Thurman.
Garcia defeated Samuel Vargas by a 7th round knockout on November 12 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a great performance from Garcia. He showed a lot of punching power with both hands in that fight. The shots that Garcia landed to the head of Vargas would have been difficult for Thurman to handle, because he’s not faced a puncher like Garcia before in his career.
The hardest hitters that Thurman has fought in his career were Jesus Soto-Karass, Diego Chaves, Julio Diaz, Luis Collazo and Shawn Porter. Those aren’t huge punchers. Chaves has a little pop in his punches. He hurt Thurman at one point in their fight four years ago.
Thurman’s last eight fights have come against these guys: Shawn Porter, Luis Collazo, Robert Guerrero, Leonard Bundu, Julio Diaz, Jesus Soto Karass and Jan Zaveck. Porter gave Thurman all kinds of problems with the pressure that he put on him and with his inside fighting.
Thurman was constantly moving to try and get away from Porter after hitting him with pot shots. Porter did a great job of staying on top of Thurman to force him to fight. Even with the pressure though, Porter rarely was able to trap Thurman, because his foot speed was too much. In the later rounds, Thurman got tired and stopped moving as much. He fought with his back against the ropes in some of the later rounds, and he did a good job of getting the better of Porter.
When Porter was in close, he smothered his own work, as he wasn’t able to get leverage on his punches the way he needed to for him to cause Thurman problems. Porter wanted to be close to Thurman, but he didn’t have a good inside game to take advantage of it. Porter is a better fighter when he’s at medium distance when throwing his power shots. For him to have beaten Thurman, he would have needed to generate power from the inside. He couldn’t do that though, and this made it a safe place for Thurman to be when Porter decided to get in close.
The one thing that we don’t know about Thurman is whether his inactivity will hurt him. Thurman only fought once in 2016 in fighting Porter Thurman could have fought a second time, but he chose to rest and recover from his grueling fight against Porter. It was definitely a very hard fight for Thurman, as he took a lot of heavy shots from Porter. Thurman barely won by the scores 115-113, 115-113 and 115-113. A lot of boxing fans raved afterwards about how Thurman had looked so great in the fight, but the reality is, he barely won. If Thurman had fought someone a notch better than Porter, it might have been a different story. If Garcia does a better job than Porter did against Thurman, then we could see him as the winner facing Khan.