How high do you rank Keith Thurman?
Keith “One Time” Thurman is a boxer from Clearwater, FL and he is often looked at as one of the next best thing now that Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquio is slowly becoming a thing of the past, but is he capable of holding a status of that magnitude? I can’t deny that he has skills but I can’t overlook the fact that he is lacking so many attributes he will need to carry the torch.
At the age of 26 he holds a record of 26W (22KO’s) and 0 losses, but he has yet to have a defining fight where it cements him into a real discussion of dominance. I am far from a bandwagon jumper or a FAN(ATIC), so I’m speaking from what I’ve seen from him and I’m not yet impressed. He does have skills and he has heart, which is definitely needed, but in his last two fights he has shown weaknesses that was not apparent before.
On March 7th of this year he stepped in the ring against Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero and he won by Unanimous decision in a fight that shown him having trouble dealing with the pressure. Guerrero backed Thurman up and smothered him in times and made the fight uncomfortable for him. He won, but this was a display of a small chink in his armor that was previously viewed as impenetrable. His last fight, on July 7th, was against Luis Collazo and it was more of the same.
Thurman took a body shot that almost dropped him, but luckily it was landed at the end of the round. Collazo put the pressure on Thurman, which had his footwork out of sync and again he looked unprepared for the pressure. I like how he is being brought along and they are increasing the competition but he has to begin to show improvement within his own skills. I can see him biting off more than he can chew if they increase the competition to one level higher without him increasing his abilities first.
This generation of fighters is full of a lot of fluff and loud talking with none of them fighting each other. You have Keith Thurman, GGG, Kell Brooks, Sergey Kovalev, Adonis Stevenson, Andre Ward, Saul Alvarez, Terence Crawford, and more, that all are trying to stake their claim on this sport but we have yet to see any of them get paired against another force that is thought to be as great or greater.
I’m not sure what’s in the works for Thurman, but I’m going to continue following his career because I know he has potential, and hopefully him and his corner start strengthening his skill set on both sides of the fight game. For him to peak out at such a young age would be a big disappointment and would definitely let down a lot of fans that already have him on a tall pedestal.
