Jeff Horn says Spence and Thurman on hit list

Boxingnews24.com

By Chris Williams: Fresh off his big upset victory over Manny Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KOs) last Saturday in Brisbane, Australia, newly crowned WBO welterweight champion Jeff Horn (17-0-1, 11 KOs) says he’s targeting welterweight champions Keith Thurman and Errol Spence Jr. for unification fights.

Those are guys on the 29-year-old Horn’s target list following his 12 round unanimous decision win over Pacquiao. Those unification fights will likely need to wait until 2018, however, as Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum have already said they want to use the rematch clause they have for a second fight against the Australian. Arum is saying that Brisbane is the first option for the Horn-Pacquiao rematch.

“Now we got to look at the other guys that are up there as well, which is Keith Thurman and Errol Spence,” said Horn at the post-fight press conference last Saturday. “Those are two targets on the hit list.”

Spence (22-0, 19 KOs) took to social media last Saturday night to let the boxing world know that he wants to fight Horn, who he refers to as “food.” It sounds like Spence, 27, doesn’t view Horn as being any real problem for him. To be sure, Horn’s fighting style is the exact type that Spence likes. He prefers when his opponents brawl with him.

Spence has the size to deal with Horn’s huge weight. Both fighters look to be in the 170s after they rehydrate. Horn wouldn’t have much if any weight advantage over Spence.

“I want the winner of the next fight,” said Spence on his Twitter. “Looking at food.”

Horn beat Pacquiao by the judges’ scores 117-111, 115-113 and 115-113. There was some disagreement among the boxing public about whether Horn truly deserved the victory. Some fans felt that Pacquiao was ripped off by the judges. ESPN commentator Teddy Atlas and former 2 division world champion Tim Bradley both felt that Pacquiao did enough to earn the victory. They both saw it as a competitive fight, but it was one that should have gone to Horn.

Personally, when I counted out the Horn rounds and compared them to the rounds in which Pacquiao did well, I could only find 3 rounds that went to Pacquiao. One of those rounds was a 10-8 round. That was the 9th round. Pacquiao had Horn hurt after hitting him with a big left hand to the head. Horn weathered the storm and made it out of the round without hitting the deck. Unfortunately, Pacquiao emptied his gas tank in trying to knock Horn out in the 10th.

It was all Horn from round 10 through 12. It’s too bad Pacquiao didn’t have the stamina and the youth to finish strong, because he could have won the fight if he had swept the final 3 rounds. He let the fight slip away and lost his chance. Afterwards, Pacquiao complained that he had come into the fight with a cold, and he had to deal with blood coming from his 2 cuts that he sustained during the fight.

I didn’t see much blood from Pacquiao after his corner stopped the bleeding. The fighter that was doing a lot of bleeding was Horn, who was cut over his right eye in round 2. That cut was a real problem for Horn in the 9th round when Pacquiao was teeing off on him with left hands.

Before Horn can fight Spence or Thurman, he needs to close the chapter on Pacquiao by beating him a second time and showing that he can do it in a more convincing manner than he did last Saturday. Like I said, I had Horn winning the fight 9 rounds to 3, but many of the rounds were close ones. That’s there were so many boxing fans that thought Pacquiao had done enough to deserve the victory. Those fans ignored the aggression and the harder landing shots that Horn was hitting Pacquiao with in every round of the fight.

“It’s time for the OG’s to hang the gloves up and let the young bucks rock out,” said IBF super featherweight champion Gervonta Davis on his Twitter in talking about Pacquiao.

There are a lot of boxing fans that probably agree with Gervonta Davis about Pacquiao needing to retire from the sport, but that’s not going to happen. It would be big, big news if Pacquiao retired, but he’s not going to. He wants a rematch with Horn, and his promoter Bob Arum is on board with that.

Speaking of Arum, I wonder how he feels now after his fighter Pacquiao lost to Horn. This was Arum’s idea to put Pacquiao in with Horn instead of another fighter. It seemed like a dumb idea for Arum to match Pacquiao against the bigger and stronger Horn instead of a bigger name.

It’s always better for a promoter to match their fighter against the biggest name possible so in case they lose, they at least can say their fighter to lose to the best. Arum can’t do that with Pacquiao getting beaten by Horn. The Australian is not close to being the best at welterweight. We’ll see that eventually when he faces the likes of Thurman or Spence. Once Horn gets wiped out by those two fighters, the boxing fans will realize how over-the-hill Pacquiao was when he fought Horn.

“Nothing but respect for Jeff Horn,” said Spence’s promoter Lou Dibella on his social media site. “True Warrior, with huge heart and balls. He still lost. Errol Spence Jr. beats both in tag team match.”

Spence does easily beat both Horn and Pacquiao, and probably on the same night if something like that could be arranged. I don’t know if Horn will ever fight Spence though. That’s a fight that I don’t see Arum and Horn’s promoters at Duco Events making. Spence is too dangerous, and it would likely badly for him.

“Errol Spence Jr., get that strap, bro,”said featherweight contender Joseph Diaz Jr. “Beat Horn’s [expletive].”

Getting a unification fight would be easy for Spence if he were more popular than he is now, but I don’t see him being given the chance to fight Horn. I think we’ll likely see Horn kept in the World Boxing Organization’s section of the welterweight division. If Horn gets beaten by Pacquiao, he’ll probably focus on fighting the WBO’s top 15 contenders in order to get another world title shot.

Horn didn’t even have to beat any contenders for him to be given a No.1 ranking by the WBO for a world title shot against Paquiao. So there’s always a possibility that we could see Horn go back to fighting 2nd tier guys if he gets beaten by Pacquiao later in this year in a rematch.

“Spence would kill Horn,” said former junior middleweight champion Ishe Smith.

As you can see there are quite a few boxers who believe Spence to have too much talent for the likes of Jeff Horn. It’s hard to disagree with so many people, because Spence looked unbeatable right now.

Pacquiao says he wants a rematch with Horn right now, but there’s also the outside chance that he could change his mind once he’s smelled the coffee and come to the conclusion that he’s lost a step and cannot beat the Australian fighter.

Horn wasn’t give hardly any chance to win the fight going in last Saturday, but he shocked the world with the fine performance he put in. The size, power and the talent that Horn showed was amazing. When you see a fighter show boxing skills like that, it just makes you wonder why people didn’t know about how good this guy was ahead of time.

Arum clearly made a big mistake of throwing Pacquiao in the ring with Horn without having him tested on one of his other Top Rank stable fighters first. If I was the 86-year-old Arum, I would have thrown Top Rank fighters Jessie Vargas or Tim Bradley with Horn first to test out whether he was safe for me to put Pacquiao in with him. I wouldn’t have thrown my only PPV money maker Pacquiao into the ring with a guy that I didn’t know much about.