By Adam Baskin: Conor Benn feels that former unified welterweight champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman doesn’t want any of that smoke because he’s too much of a “high risk, low reward” fighter for him.
As far as Benn (21-0, 14 KOs) is concerned, the 33-year-old Thurman (30-1, 22 KOs) may as well retire from the sport.
Benn sees through Thurman’s excuse for not fighting him by saying he’s not interested in fighting the young crop at this stage in his 15-year career. Those are just words.
Thurman is trying to save himself from suffering his second pro defeat, which at this point, would wreck his chances of getting a big-money fight against unified welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr or Terence Crawford.
“How do I beat Thurman? On explosiveness. I’m too young, too powerful, too fresh, and too fast,” said Conor Benn on social media when asked how he could beat Keith Thurman.
“I believe Thurman gets filled in. There’s a reason he’s not bitting to nothing, and you can’t really blame him, to be honest. Thurman may as well retire.
“He says he’s not fighting no crop coming through, but yeah, he wants the big names,” Benn continued. “Listen, I’m probably one of the biggest names in the welterweight division.
“I’m definitely a frontrunner anyways. So the fact that he don’t want to take that fight surprises me a little bit, but obviously, the risk-reward with me, he don’t see it.
“Listen, anyone can get it. When people make you out like your scared and all that. You don’t hear me shouting from the rooftops, ‘Jose Ramirez is scared.’ He turned down a million dollars, so he’s scared. Keith Thurman is scared. [Yordenis] Ugas is scared.
“People that go, ‘Oh, he’s scared,’ it’s just to sell the fight. It’s like those other plums that call me out and go, ‘He’s scared of me.’ They’re talking rubbish,” said Benn.
“They’re not scared. None of them are scared, man. Do you know what I mean?
“The fights going to be announced at this rate, mate,” said Benn about his catchweight match against middleweight Chris Eubank Jr on October 8th in the UK. “Yeah, his pen’s missing. It’s gone. I think he kicked it under the table and dropped it somewhere.”
