By Dan Ambrose: As far as trainer Kenny Porter is concerned, Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman is an injury-faker and faked his recent hand injury that caused the cancellation of his May 19th fight date. Kenny is the father/trainer of former IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter, and he thinks Thurman has been faking injuries as far as 2016.
Kenny’s conclusion is that Thurman wants no part of fighting a rematch against Shawn. Thurman lost his WBC welterweight title. He’s said to have vacated the belt, but a lot of boxing fans believe he was forced to give it up because he was going to be stripped by the WBC.
It’s been 14 months since Thurman won the WBC in beating Danny Garcia, and he never got around to defending it. Despite his inactivity, Thurman still has his WBA welterweight title. The World Boxing Association has been patient with him through his period of injuries.
Thurman said he suffered a neck injury in 2016 that resulted in his fight against Porter (28-2-1, 17 KOs) being postponed until June 2016. The fight did eventually happen, but Kenny said he never saw a medical report on Thurman’s neck injury. Thurman’s latest injury is a hand injury he suffered recently. Thurman, 29, was already dealing with an elbow problem that dated back before his last fight on March 4, 2017 against Danny Garcia. Speaking of Garcia, Kenny thinks that he doesn’t want any part of fighting Porter either.
“It’s, you know, par for the course. Unless he’s ready to prove that he has a hand injury I don’t believe anything is going on there,” Kenny said to Fighthub about Thurman. “It’s not bad luck [on Thurman’s part]. It’s strategic. It’s not bad luck. You know that first fight he pulled out of, there was never any medical reports given about that, nothing, never received anything. There was never any proof of a car in any type of accident so, you know, I made a quick call to Florida, ‘because I know people in the insurance business, and he had a 2016 car. He said ‘nah, there’s no reports of a 2016 Mustang being in a car accident,’” Kenny said.
It’s unfortunate that Thurman keeps getting hurt. The hand injury is his fourth injury since 2014. These are the reported injuries for Thurman in the last four years:
• Shoulder – 2014
• Neck – 2016
• Elbow – 2017
• Hand – 2018
There’s nothing Kenny can do about Thurman’s injury excuses. He now only has the WBA title left, and who knows how much longer they’ll let him stay out of action with their belt. If Thurman does make it into the ring for a likely voluntary defense in the summer, the WBA will likely keep an eye on him after that. If Thurman keeps suffering injuries that prevent him from taking on meaningful opposition, the WBA will have to strip him at some point of his belt. Once Thurman loses the WBA title, he’ll be like any other beltless contender in the division.
Kenny isn’t happy over the news of Thurman’s latest injury to his hand, because it ruined the rematch between him and Porter. Now that Thurman no longer has his WBC 147 lb. title, he no longer has to defend the belt against Porter. That’s who Thurman would have had to defend the title against in 2018 if he didn’t give the belt or whatever the case was in him losing it.
Porter will be facing Danny Garcia (34-1, 20 KOs), and even that fight isn’t certain. Garcia already tasted defeat last year in a 12 round split decision defeat at the hands of Thurman, and that fight seems to have taken away his ambition, because he’s only fought once since then in beating Brandon Rios last February by a 9th round knockout. Rios is viewed as an over-the-hill fighter in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. Garcia fighting Rios looked like he was taking it easy with his career to avoid another loss.
“Of course, you going to report your new car in a car accident. So, it never happened. He knows it never happened,” Kenny Porter said about Thurman’s car accident in 2016. “I don’t know what it is. I think him and Danny [Garcia] both have a mindset that they don’t want to fight Shawn and they’re hoping that Shawn is continuing with trying to stay busy and fight other people and I’m sure they rooting against Shawn when he fights. They want him to lose. They have no interest in fighting him,” Kenny said.
It’s not just Shawn Porter that Thurman and Garcia aren’t fighting right now. Neither of them has shown much interest in facing IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. The boxing public wants to see Garcia and Thurman fight Spence, and unfortunately neither of them appear to be interested in doing that.
“Eventually Shawn will fight Danny for the first time, he’ll fight Keith again — the hope is to fight Errol Spence, Bud Crawford, all of these guys,” Kenny said. ”And then he moves on with the rest of his life, because boxing’s not a sport for guys to stick around forever. These are the top echelon fighters, we want to fight those guys and we just going to do whatever we can to make those fights happen.”
Porter hasn’t been as busy as he should have been lately himself. He fought only once in 2016, and he hasn’t fought at all in 2018 and he doesn’t have a fight scheduled. Almost half the year is over with, and Porter still doesn’t have a fight scheduled against anyone. What this means is Porter will likely fight only once in 2018. Porter’s two fights in 2017 were against weak opponents in Andre Berto and Adrian Granados. Those are not upper echelon contenders in the 147 lb. weight division. Porter will either fight Danny Garcia next or one of the other contenders in the WBC’s top 15. If Danny doesn’t want to fight Porter, then the WBC will probably have him face #3 WBC Jessie Vargas. Porter will be fighting for the WBC belt in 2018. The only question is will it be against Garcia or one of the other contenders.
