Malignaggi: Why would you want to rush Thurman-Spence?

Paulie Malignaggi talks to the media about a potential welterweight unification fight between Keith Thurman and Errol Spence and why he doesn’t have a problem with Thurman waiting that fight out for the time being…

“I don’t know if he’s two steps ahead of the pack but Thurman is the elite guy right now, and Spence is too, Spence just has to get the names in there. But I think Spence is certainly a scary guy and he’s top-notch.

“You know, Thurman has the body of work and Thurman has done the job, you know, and he’s undefeated so, yeah, I don’t see why you can’t call him the best at this moment.

“Honestly I’ve been saying I don’t know why people would wanna see Thurman and Spence right now. Wouldn’t you want Thurman to be at his most healthy and his most sharp? I don’t know why you’d want the guy to fight Spence off a one year layoff and then off of surgery. And then even after one comeback fight I don’t know why you’d want that kind of rust to go into a fight against Errol Spence.

“I’d think you’d want the best Keith Thurman possible and the best Errol Spence possible, you know. You might only get that fight once, wouldn’t you want it to be when they’re at their most ready and at their best? Why would you wanna rush that fight? I don’t really understand, even from the fans’ perspective, when Keith says “yeah I wanna take this first and do this first,’ I don’t have a problem with that because I wanna see them both fight at their best because I wanna know who’s better.

“I don’t wanna think about ‘oh, maybe if Keith didn’t have that layoff, maybe if Keith didn’t have that surgery’ or whatnot — I wanna actually see them in there at their best and I wanna see a great fight and I think it is a great fight when they’re at their best.

“I’d like to see Thurman and Spence but I don’t think it happens until 2019.”