WelterWAITs

I'm not excusing their farcical negotiation deadlock, but both Spence and Crawford have more credibility than Thurman. Errol demanded to travel to England and take on Kell Brook as his first real world class assignment, while Keithy just mumbled something about 'I don't think Al would want me travelling to the UK'.

 

I disagree. KT's resume at 147 is still better than what these two have done there. So Errol went and beat a guy who got whupped by 3G, had his eye socket broken. That's just a 'decent' win IMO. Brook was not the force he was after 3G.

 

That's all easy to say in hindsight, but Spence had been calling for the fight before Brook signed to box Golovkin. Middleweight defeat notwithstanding, Brook was a strong, skilled, hard-hitting, seasoned champ at 147, a significant number of observers favored him to beat Spence, and a relatively green Errol went to his back yard and stopped him (whereas Keith had wanted no part). All adds up to a bolder move than any Thurman — lest we forget, author of the tawdry "don't duck me, thun" incident of 2012, wherein he played press conference badass with a former junior welterweight whose talcum hands and lack of physicality at 147 led most observers to correctly identify him as the most beatable titlist at welter in 2012/13 — has ever dared make.

Thurman can't keep dining out on Chaves, Swift and Porter forever. He hasn't defeated anyone of relevance at welter in over five years. All he did was sit around with his hand out waiting for a big name to throw him a bone (old Pac obliged and kicked his ass). In that time, Crawford has at least stopped Horn, Kavaliauskas and Porter.

Thurman actually thinks he should get the Spence-Crawford winner for beating Mario Barrios and sitting around on his ass. He thinks he's a big deal.

Nah, he's definitely the biggest schmuck at welter by far, hands down, no contest.

 

He's also the former WW champ. They tend to get shots easier having one once. Pac beat Broner to get Thurman. That makes more sense?

Relatively green Errol Spence jr? At 27yo???? No....

Obviously KT has not beaten anyone in a while, but his resume at 147 is still better than what those two have done so far.

 

Shawn Porter lost a lot of fights but my respects to him. No other ww has fought 1/100th of the fighters guys like Pac, Floyd, Mosley or ODLH fought.

 

You might ask who Duran had beaten at middleweight to get a shot at Iran Barkley's title. Doesn't matter. Just as Duran is Duran, Manny is Manny, globally recognized name and Top 50 ATG. Thurman once held a paper belt. Those are hardly comparable statuses. In 2019, Pacquiao was still a large draw and one of the sport's legendary figures. A guy like that is always getting opportunities to box for titles if he wants them, and Thurman was only too desperate to give him one. His only significant action after March of 2017 had been to sit practically idle for two years, with only a gimme fight with perennial whipping boy Josesito to bridge the gap, while waiting for one of the cash cows to give him a payday. He struck lucky when Pacquiao entered an arrangement with PBC and Al gave him first dibs (likely due to his seniority in the roster) at absorbing Pacquiao's name into his own. Well, we all know how that went for ol' Once Upon a Time. Talked a good one, but fumbled the ball and flopped when the big moment came.

Three years on, all Keith is doing is sitting around acting like he's some big attraction who's entitled to have a shot at a unified championship fall into his lap while other guys (at least one of whom is now a considerably bigger name and hotter property than him) do the work bringing those belts together. He's kidding himself. Manny brought his drawing power and his name prestige to the table. What does Thurman bring remotely comparable to that? The guy is all but forgotten, last seen rolling off the couch to underwhelmingly labor through a distance affair with a handpicked Mario Barrios (a nobody at welter who'd just been knocked out by Tiny Tank at 140). His brand is all but dead in the water. There is no reason at all, other than the loyalty and kindness of Haymon, that Thurman should get a shot at the Spence-Crawford winner. He's not popular. He holds no trinkets. His name holds no historical prestige, nor any current creditability. He's beaten nobody of world level significance at the weight in over five years.

Relatively being the operative word. Brook was Spence's first taste of real world class at the weight. He'd been brought along decently enough with the Bundus and Algieris, but, considering how big a jump in class Brook represented from those guys, it can hardly be claimed that he was thoroughly seasoned going into that fight.

It's categorically not better than Spence's. And, again, there's a limit to how long he can keep dining out on exploits that are in excess of half a decade in the past. For a supposed top welter, he should have a stronger cumulative body of work at welterweight than Terence Crawford, considering he's been seriously campaigning at the weight more than twice as long. But none of that body of work has been amassed in the last five years. After Danny and Porter — and, funnily enough, right around the time that Spence emerged as his chief rival in the division and an encounter between the two became one of the industry's most talked-about fights — the hippy's passion for his work slowed right down and he became Keith 'Part-Time' Thurman. Even part-time might be putting it generously. He has fought precisely three times in five years, two gimme bouts and a payday with a quadragenarian who used to be a flyweight. Pitiful.

Thurman is indubitably the biggest chump out of any perceived top guy at the weight, unless we include Conor Benn (who's really done nothing to be thought of in top guy terms).

 

You make one good points....but you realize KT is essentially retired. But when he was fighting, he took on better comp then what 30yo's Spence and Crawford are doing at 147. That is the point i was making.

 

I'd say Spence and Crawford have more lately been chowing down on comparable food to the stuff Keith was eating up during his run. Porter, Garcia, Ugas, Kavaliauskas, all respectable stuff. Keith is only essentially retired because he's chosen to sit out meaningful action and only toss his hat in the ring for big paydays.

He had a solid enough streak going up until 2017, and I enjoyed him well enough (while sidestepping the hype) on his road from Chaves through Collazo. Around 2015 his attitude markedly changed and he became more and more ring-shy. It's like he felt his dues were eternally paid with the Porter and Swift fights.

I think it's fair to say that Spence, even after underachieving and falling in line with PBC status quo for a period after beating Brook, has now usurped Keith in terms of significant work at the weight. Crawford has the chance to go beyond Keith in his very next bout, if Spence-Bud comes off.

 

agreed!

 

You're alright, Lance. You and Lou should bury the hatchet sometime.

 

in his back I'd be happy if he just stopped replying to me just to antagonize like a toddler. But I hold no grudges. if I can be cool w/ Pimp and Olu...anything is possible

 

I wouldn't call Brook a seasoned champ. Kell Brook only had 1 good win on his resume in Porter. Kell Brook isn't very proven for all the credit he gets. Thurman was the only Welterweight to take a tough fight right after winning a title and he did it in his very next fight. It took Spence two years to finally stop milking his overinflated p4p ranking to finally fight another good opponent while Brook waited two years as well just to commit career suicide against Golovkin.

 

His ledger may have lacked flashy names in the 'Win' column outside of Porter, but he had plenty experience by the time he and Spence met. He'd been stunned and kept his wits, had hung tough through pressure and adversity down the stretch of a fight to rally in the 'championship rounds' and seal the win, had fought through cuts, had travelled overseas to wrest a strap from a strong, mauling titlist and showed composure under fire in doing so. That's seasoned.

That shopworn Collazo was still serviceable enough, but, let's face it, even Algieri gave Khan a better run for his money, and you'll note that I haven't given Spence any particular credit for running over Chris with consummate ease.

This is true. I noted as much earlier in the thread. But he stepped it up again and will be coming off three successive Top 5 scalps when next he boxes (okay, maybe Danny was #6, close enough). Thurman's been milking whatever credit he'd built up from 2013–2017 for the last five years now. I mean, it was a solid run, but it wasn't so solid that he can just live off it for a half a decade thereafter and still consider himself a compelling candidate for big fights.

The division's best weren't too hot on facing Brook between his mandatory obligations. When journalists asked Thurman about the prospect of travelling to England to unify with Kell in a packed arena on Sky Box Office PPV, he made his excuses. So the Sheffield man did what he felt he had to do in order to secure a defining fight — that he was compelled to jump two divisions to pursue a thunderously hard-hitting pound-for-pounder and career middleweight tells us something about the difficulty he was experiencing in tempting his more creditable peers at welter. He then returned to face the mandatory challenge of Spence, who eagerly seized the assignment Thurman had shied away from and travelled out of his comfort zone to test his mettle against a very solid titlist, as Brook himself had done three years previously, and as Thurman has never done and probably never would've done (even at his hungriest, he was looking at the path of least resistance and belligerently calling out Paul Malignaggi).

 

I recall Spence being avoided by all those top guys. Thurman, Porter and Garcia. They told him he needs to win a title first. Even after beating Brook, they still wasn't trying to fight him. Thurman ducked him, Porter was force to fight him because he was mandatory. Garcia decided to finally fight him because he thought Spence wouldn't be the same after the car accident. I also remember it took Mike Garcia to have the balls to call out and fight Spence. The welterweights all caught flack for letting Mikey fight Spence first.

 

This is a fair point. Spence was calling for Thurman, whereas Thurman played the prospect of that bout down whenever it was raised, fronted like he was some cash cow of the sport and Spence was an upstart who needed to earn it (as if Spence hadn't just earned it by bodyguarding Thurman from his chief divisional rival), came on like the encounter needed to be marinaded until it was the size of Floyd-De La Hoya or Floyd-Canelo or Floyd-Pac or something (which it was never ever going to be). Didn't seem to me like Al was necessarily in a rush to pit his top welter guys against each other quite so soon, either, which suited Keith just fine.

In fairness to Shawn, he had a WBC-mandated obligation to deal with Ugas while Spence and Mikey were playing 'fantasy fights', and showed he had balls and genuine ambition by facing Spence right after that. He could've gone another route, unifications aren't mandated, but he'd made it clear he wanted to test himself. Keith is, uh, built different.