WBA Welterweight champion Keith Thurman is confident he will score a knockout win over challenger Shawn Porter when they face each other in the ring on June 25 at the Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York.
Thurman, who is unbeaten in his pro career is a known knockout artist having a KO rating of 81 percent. But for whatever reason, Thurman has not scored a knockout victory since his last TKO win over Jes?s Soto Karass in 2013. I?m definitely going for the knockout.? Thurman said during the opening of his training camp to media in St. Petersburg, Florida early this month. ?I?m going for the knockout. I?ve stated it before. My hands are itching for a knockout. I?m ?One Time,? all the time. That?s my philosophy. Every single time I step into the ring I?m looking for the knockout. We don?t get paid for overtime,” he said. Thurman takes pride in knocking out almost all of his opponents at least until 2014 when he engaged Julio D?az in a title fight that ended in a technical decision in his favor. ?I?ve always considered myself a knockout artist. Back to when I was a teenager knocking out grown men in headgear. Ever since then, I?ve been dropping people like a bad habit,” he said. While Thurman is confident he will keep his unbeaten career record, it cannot be denied that he is bothered by his recurring neck injury following his car accident last February which led to the postponement of his scheduled fight against Porter. Thurman’s camp seems to be downplaying his neck injury but Thurman admitted that there were changes in sparring session schedules apparently to avoid any incident that may add more strain to the injury. “We were still able to get the necessary amount of weeks in for the sparring but we did have to push it back. Normally I’ll spar a minimum of once a week leading up to the sparring in training camp. What I was unable to do pretty much was I was unable to do that sparring,” Thurman told BoxingScene.com “Sometimes if I feel up to it and I really wanted to I maybe spar twice (a week prior to camp) but once we were doing camp it is always a minimum of twice a week with an average of three times a week. We spar Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The only thing I wasn’t able to do was get some earlier rounds of sparring in this camp but it didn’t really disturb how we organized this camp which is why I still feel real good and confident about this training camp,” he added. Porter is very much aware of Thurman’s injury and his handlers may have already thought of appropriate steps to take advantage of Thurman’s situation. Thurman’s neck injury is critical because it is a natural target being an extended part of the head as Porter’s intended head shots could land on Thurman’s neck. Porter, who once served as sparring partner of Manny Pacquiao in one of his training camps in the Philippines, could deliver Thurman’s first career loss not because he is a superior fighter than Thurman but he simply has a built-in advantage for this particular fight because of Thurman’s injury.
