When Keith Thurman appeared as the headliner against Luis Collazo, on the debut of Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) on ESPN, the boxing community was less than thrilled. The match up appeared to be a step back from Thurman’s last fight against Robert Guerrero; where the undefeated 147 pound champion opened the PBC on NBC, and boxing fans were left scratching their heads.
Critics of a Thurman vs. Collazo match up were chirping that the match up had the stench of Al Haymon, the architect of PBC, written all of it. Somehow, this mismatch was a sign that Haymon’s project is detrimental to boxing and we as fans will suffer from it. What else is new? More on Haymon & the PBC another time. I will just say in my humble opinion that I have seen more good than bad from the PBC and it is way too early to cement a label on it either way.
As far as the Thurman fight was concerned, most boxing observers, including this scribe, felt at the very least we were going to see Keith One Time Thurman shine. As good as Thurman has been, and he has been very good, he is still missing that one signature, WOW, performance. After the fight with Luis Collazo, he is still missing that moment.
The fight was far from a mismatch and it gave us boxing junkies a friendly reminder that you could never predict what is going to happen in this sport when you are dealing with high level, determined, professionals.
In case we forgot, Luis Collazo is a highly determined professional, and a very good boxer to boot. A tough kid from Brooklyn, this was not the first time Collazo had the odds stacked against him. However, Collazo is the kind of fighter that will never sign on to be a punching bag for somebody, as he proved once again last Saturday night. Throw in a damaged left paw from Thurman and you have another chapter of the unpredictability of the sweet science.
Early in the fight, Teddy Atlas had his Deep Throat moment when he revealed to the viewing boxing audience that Keith Thurman had hurt his left hand during training. However, Thurman is a highly determined professional as well and he was not about to pull out of such an important fight in his career.
Keen boxing observers did not need the Atlas leak to know that there was something wrong with Keith’s hand. It was apparent from the onset of the boxing match that the beautiful snapping left jab, the jab that sets up all of Thurman’s fluency in the ring, the jab that is often followed up by the anvil-like right was not there. Thurman’s right put fighters to sleep, but his left jab is unquestionably his most important tool in the ring.
Not having this tool is like a baseball player without his glove, a schoolteacher without their lesson plan, a fair evaluation could not be made because the job cannot be executed to its full potential. Not having proper use of his left hand made it impossible for Thurman to be at his best.
Throw in the tenacious style of Collazo and what you have is a night that is all wrong for Thurman. Collazo was a freight train charging all night against a guy in Thurman, who is very scientific in his set up. A science experiment with missing ingredients has the potential to become spontaneous combustion.
That moment of explosion almost came when Collazo landed a vicious left hand to the body of Thurman. A shot that might have knocked out most 147 pounders, did not even drop Thurman, not even One Time. Visibly hurt, Thurman stood on his feet and kept going. Kept trying to adjust, kept looking for ways to compensate for that missing left jab.
While it was far from a signature, WOW, performance, Keith Thurman gutted out a TKO victory where he laced damaging left hooks and rights hands forcing the highly determined professional in Collazo into submission. The last time Collazo did not finish a professional was back in 2002, Thurman turned pro in 2007.
As a side note, while Atlas broke the story about Thurman hurting his left, the announcing team paid almost no attention to the lack of left jabs we are accustomed to seeing from Thurman and failed to ask him about his left hand in the post-fight interview. I have tried to reach Thurman for comment on the injury but have not gotten through as of yet.
While it might be unfair to fully evaluate Thurman on this fight because of the injury, the boxing world is looking for One Time to face a top ranked guy the next time out. Thurman expressed to me in a prior interview his desire to test his skills against Floyd Mayweather Jr. That is unlikely to come to fruition for several reasons.
While there is no boxer that can replace the pay day Thurman would get with a Mayweather fight, there are plenty of great fighters out there at 147 that would satisfy the public. Kell Brook, Amir Kahn, Timothy Bradley, Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, Sadam Ali, Brandon Rios, the list goes on. Any of these men would give Thurman a big test and satisfy the boxing public.
As is always the case with matchmaking, there is a lot of politics when it comes to finalizing A vs. B. Keith Thurman has told me he fights whatever name Al Haymon verbalizes to him over the phone. Thurman hopes that name is Mayweather. This scribe is pulling for Kell Brook. The likelihood is that it will be a lower ranked, but respectable fighter. We all wait with great anticipation.
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