Spence: Thurman doesn’t want to fight me; Roach picks Joshua over Klitschko – News

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By Scott Gilfoid: The highly rated #1 IBF welterweight contender Errol Spence (21-0, 18 KOs) says WBA/WBC champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (28-0, 22 KOs) doesn’t want to fight him. Spence thinks Thurman doesn’t want to take the fight with him. He won’t commit to the fight. When the two of them were sitting next to each other last Saturday during a Showtime Boxing interview, Thurman wouldn’t look at Spence during the entire time they were sitting.

Thurman also didn’t say he would fight Spence. This isn’t going to stop Spence from calling out Thurman after he beats IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook in their fight on May 27 next month. Spence has already said that he’s planning on calling out Thurman immediately upon winning the IBF belt, because he wants o fight him in a unification match. Spence also wants to fight WBO champion Manny Pacquiao if possible. He says those are two fights that he’s going to be trying to get once he snatches the IBF strap from Brook.

“He really don’t want the fight,” said Spence to fighthype.com about his believe that Thurman not wanting to fight him. “He don’t want the fight. He’s chasing everybody else. He’s chasing Floyd. I guess he’s going to fight Shawn Porter again. I’m going to demand for it after I win the belt. He’s been talking about unifying and becoming the undisputed welterweight champion. After I win the belt, he’ll have a chance to get one of the belts with no excuses not to get the belt. He has to fight,” said Spence.

There’s nothing Spence can do about forcing Thurman to give him the fight because the two of them will be in different lanes once Spence beats Brook to win his IBF title. The only way that fight gets made is if Thurman feels enough pressure from the boxing public to make the match happen. Spence might need to become a star for that to happen. Thurman has already said in the past that he wants the Spence fight to be a huge one when he does eventually agree to the fight.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Thurman will still be a world champion by the time that happens. Thurman barely won his last 2 fights against Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter. Thurman’s weight in between fights is also an area of concern. If he’s going to let his weight balloon up between fights the way it is right now, he’s not going to get past guys like Porter and Danny Garcia in his rematches. Fighters that let their weight get out of hand in between fights, they don’t last as champions. Besides, Thurman doesn’t seem to have the ability to stand in the pocket and get the better of his opponents the way guys like Floyd Mayweather Jr. was able to.

When Thurman stands his ground, he takes punishment. The only thing he seems to be good at is hitting and then moving away quickly to keep from getting hit. Porter is likely to make improvements over the mistakes he made last time he fought Thurman and come back a new and improved fighter. That seems to be Porter’s way. He’s like a constantly improving machine that is more dangerous each time he comes back. I don’t know that Thurman can improve over his previous performance against Porter.

If anything, I think Thurman will be worse in a rematch with Porter, because he’ll have to shed all that weight. Thurman seemed to gas out in his last fight against Garcia in the second half of the fight. All I can think is that he was weight drained from taking off blubber. Thurman might be better off moving up to 154 if he’s going to be letting himself get so fat in between fights. It could also be that Thurman is a natural 154lb fighter at this point in his career. He’s now 28, and his metabolism might be changing.

“He helped me a lot. I want to think Charlo,” said Spence to fighthype.com about Jermell Charlo helping him with sparring to get ready for his fight with Kell Brook. “Basically, I had to give it my all. It was like a chess match in there. The best sparring the best. It was good work. It was like real fighting,” said Spence.

It would have been great to see the sparring sessions between Spence and Jermell Charlo. Those two fighters could be meeting each other down the road when Spence eventually moves up in weight to 154 when he starts getting heavier and can no longer make the 147lb limit. It’s possible Spence will be able to stay a 147 his entire career though, because he looks like he’s one of those types of guys that will always be thin even when he’s older. Charlo will likely need to move up to 160 like his brother Jermall Charlo in the near future, because he’s a big fighter for the junior middleweight division, and it’s likely going to be increasingly hard for him to make the 154lb limit as time goes by.

“He’s trying to fight someone like Pacquiao, which is understandable,” said Spence about Thurman wanting to fight Pacquiao. But after I beat Kell Brook, I’m going to the fight and demanding the fight. If he can’t get the Pacquiao fight, then he’s got to fight me. If he said he was going to fight me, then when I win, I’ll be hollering for the fight right after the fight. So if it’s not in demand, he won’t have to fight me,” said Spence.

Thurman is wasting his time calling out the 38-year-old Manny Pacquiao. His promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank has already made it abundantly clear that he has no interest of matching Pacquiao against Thurman. Arum wasn’t impressed with how Thurman and Danny Garcia fought their recent match. He saw the fight as lacking action and drama. I think Arum would change his mind about not wanting to put Pacquiao in with Thurman if he became a huge star in boxing like Mayweather. I don’t think that’s going to happen in the foreseeable future. My guess is Pacquiao will be long retired by the time Thurman ever becomes a star in the sport if he ever does. As heavy as Thurman gets in between fights, I think he has maybe a year or two at the top left before he gets beaten and sent back into the contender ranks. Once Thurman faces an improved Porter or if he fights Spence, I see him losing to both and that’ll pretty much finish him. He’ll be a contender with a belt like Danny Garcia and Amir Khan.

“I’ll try and fight Pacquiao or try and fight the next big name in the division,” said Spence in going after a fight with Pacquiao if Thurman decides not to fight him. “But I’m not sitting around waiting for anybody. This will be the first and last time I’m going to sit around and wait on somebody. I’m going to have the belt and I’m going to defend it and just stay busy. That’s the way it is. That’s the way life goes. I think he was trying to avoid the question,” said Spence about Thurman when the two of them were side by side being interviewed by Showtime last Saturday night. He gave an answer, ‘Maybe I’ll fight him.’ He’s not going, ‘Yeah, I’ll fight him,’ because that means he’s going to be committed to the fight. You get to ask him why he didn’t look at me,” said Spence about why Thurman wouldn’t look at him when the two of them were sitting next to each other.
Freddie Roach picks Anthony Joshua to defeat Wladimir Klitschko

Trainer Freddie Roach is going with youth in selecting the younger 27-year-old IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua to defeat 41-year-old former undisputed champion Wladimir Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) in their fight this Saturday night on April 29 at Wembley Stadium in London, England. Roach is friends with Wladimir, but he still thinks Joshua will be too much for him and will emerge as the winner of the fight. Roach admits that Wladimir will have the experience advantage in the fight, but he wonders just how well he’ll be able to use that experience due to his advanced age.

“Experience is a really, really huge obstacle for young guys,” Roach said to Sky Sports News HQ. “The thing is how much can he really bring to the table, how much of that old Klitschko can he bring back? He’s in a very difficult situation right now – does he have one more left or not? We’ll see very soon,” said Roach.

The thing with Klitschko is he’s not had a good performance for so many years. It’s impossible to know how well he’ll perform against Joshua because his last good outing was against Kubrat Pulev in November 2014. Klitschko has since had back to back poor efforts against Bryant Jennings and Tyson Fury. Wladimir looked dreadful in both fights. He hasn’t fought since the Fury fight 2 years ago. For whatever reason, Wladimir decided not to take a tune-up to get ready for the fight with the 27-year-old Joshua. Personally, I think that’s dumb, but I don’t know what’s going on with Wladimir’s head. Is he really serious about wanting to beat Joshua?

Is Wladimir just taking the fight to get a final big payday? It sure looks like it to me. When you’re serious about wanting to win a huge fight after a long layoff, you see fighters taking tune-ups. When they don’t take tune-ups, it gives the appearance that they’re just taking the fight for a payday. I hope that’s not the case with Wladimir. I’d like to think that he believes he can really beat Joshua. I don’t agree with the way that he’s chosen to take this fight off of a 2-year layoff and a terrible loss against Tyson Fury.