Danny Garcia: Khan is a better fighter than Thurman

By Jeff Aranow: WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia (33-0, 19 KOs) says he’s not worried at all about his next opponent WBA World welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (27-0, 2 KOs) for their fight on March 4, because he believes that Amir “King” Khan is a better fighter than him.

Garcia knocked out Khan four years ago in the 4th round in 2012. Khan was giving Garcia a lot of problems in the first two rounds until getting hurt by a big left hook in round 3 and then finished off in the 4th.

Garcia-Thurman will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing. The fight is expected to take place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Thurman is the favorite for now, but it’s still a very tough match to predict with any accuracy.

For all the boxing fans that picked Lucas Matthysse over Garcia in their fight several years ago, they were all wrong, as Garcia wound up out-boxing Matthysse to win a 12 round decision. Garcia found a way to negate Matthysse’s punching power to get the victory.

Garcia said this to Fighthub.com about the Thurman fight:

“I got to be smart,” said Danny Garcia about his March 4 fight against Thurman. “Swim without getting wet. In 2017, I want all big fights.”

In speaking about Amir Khan, Garcia said, “[He’s a] way better fighter than Keith Thurman, Bro. Olympic silver medalist. He fought everybody. Battle tested. Keith Thurman got one or two fights on his resume. I respect him because he’s a champion, but I don’t know who he beat for the belt. I don’t know who he beat for the WBA belt. Do you know?” said Garcia.

Khan might be a better fighter than Thurman, but his punch resistance doesn’t appear to be better. Thurman hasn’t been knocked yet; although he has been hurt in three of his fights. Luis Collazo almost dropped Thurman with a body shot in their fight in 2015.

Khan has faster hands than Thurman, and he moves better. You can argue that Khan is the more exciting fighter than Thurman. Khan is willing to throw a lot of speedy combinations and take risks. Thurman tends to move forward to throw hard single shots, and then he likes to retreat.

If you attack him while he’s retreating, he’ll usually throw a left hook, which is his primary defensive weapon that he likes to use when he’s under attack. Thurman’s fast hands enable him to land big shots when fighters do attack him hard. However, this practice will likely result in Thurman getting knocked out one of these days, because he leaves himself open when he’s throwing his combinations.

Khan could be a real problem for Thurman if he could take his power shots. If Thurman can’t knock Khan out, then he’ll be in for a world of hurt against him, because Khan has got really fast hands. He’ll win a lot of rounds against Thurman if he doesn’t get hurt by him from one of his big power shots.

When asked if he’s going to beat Thurman up on March 4, Garcia said, “I am. I think he’d [Amir Khan] out-box him [Thurman]. He’s actually more talented than him. Keith just became a good boxer. In the amateurs, he was a slugger. They moved his career good. In the amateurs, he was a slugger. He’d move forward and throw bombs and everybody would out-box him. So I guess in the pros, he became a boxer. On March 4th, we got to do what we got to do and that’s win. I’m more battle-tested than him. Honestly, I don’t see what people see. I see boxing differently than a lot of people. He’s just regular to me at the end of the day. I’ve seen him a couple of times. He looks like 200 pounds. I’m not really worried about him. I got to go in there and be Danny Garcia,” said Garcia.

Thurman really bulks up after he rehydrates for his fights. He winds up looking like a full middleweight. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thurman weighs as much as middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin does on fight nights. Thurman is someone that might eventually need to move up to junior middleweight in the near future. I’m sure the 5’7” Thurman will work as hard as possible to resist moving up in weight, because he’s very short and that would cause him a lot of problems if he were to have to fight taller guys like the Charlo brothers, Erislandy Lara and Demetrius Andrade. Those fighters would all have a lot of height and reach over Thurman.

“Danny walks around right now at 158,” said Garcia’s father/trainer Angel Garcia. “That’s the max. He can make 147 easy still. When you got to dehydrate, then it’s time to move up. He’s good. He’s a good champion,” said Angel about Thurman. “He’s got a right hand. He also has got a lot of bad things. He can’t take a body shot,” said Angel about Thurman.

Thurman was hurt by a body shot from Luis Collazo in their fight in 2015. Thurman almost went down, but he somehow stayed on his feet. Thurman was eventually able to stop Collazo in the 7th round. In Thurman’s other fight in 2015, he beat Robert Guerrero by a 12 round unanimous decision. That was the fight that Thurman said he would stand in front of Guerrero for the first six rounds to show the boxing fans that he could slug with the Gilroy, California native.

However, when Guerrero started getting the better of Thurman with his power shots, Thurman changed his game plan by going to the outside and boxing. Thurman was then able to dominate the second half of the fight. In 2016, Thurman has fought only once in beating Shawn Porter by a close 12 round unanimous decision last June. The fight was decided by the narrowest of margins with Thurman winning by the scores 115-113 x 3.

The thing that Thurman has going against him is his weak resume. Thurman has fought only one good fighter in his entire career in Shawn Porter. Thurman’s recent fights have come against the following fighters:

Shawn Porter

Robert Guerrero

Luis Collazo

Leonard Bundu

Julio Diaz

Jan Zaveck

Those are not great fighters. The only good fighter that Thurman has fought is Shawn Porter.
Garcia recently defeated Samuel Vargas by a 7th round knockout last November in a tune-up fight. Earlier this year in January, Garcia beat Robert Guerrero by a 12 round decision to win the vacant WBC 147lb title.

I don’t know if Garcia is serious about thinking that Khan is more talented than Thurman. It sounds like Garcia isn’t going to be saying too many nice things about Thurman before fighting him. It makes sense for Garcia not to flatter Thurman, because he has to sell the fight to the boxing public. It’s not going to be easy for him to do that if he’s wasting precious energy pumping up Thurman.

Thurman displayed good boxing skills in the Porter fight, but he still had to hold on to win a close decision. Porter’s aggression made it tough on Thurman. That was a fight that Thurman could have lost if he didn’t win some crucial rounds. Porter isn’t as big a puncher as Garcia though. The shots that Porter was landing might have been knockout blows if Garcia was throwing the same punches.