In recent videos and photos, Thurman has never looked happier?and, at the same time, never so far away from being in fighter mode?
Try to wrangle an answer about Keith Thurman?s return to the ring and all you?ll get from Team Thurman is a vague statement about August, maybe September, against TBA. Reports are that Thurman is in Japan, training?maybe, possibly.
What we do know, though, is the official story.
Thurman injured his elbow in his bout with Danny Garcia in March of last year and underwent surgery that put him on the shelf the rest of the year. Scheduled to return in May of this year, he would pull out almost immediately after being added to the Showtime schedule, claiming a hand injury. A few weeks later, he was ordered to defend his WBC welterweight title against Shawn Porter, but rather than revisit his hard-fought win over Porter, he opted to vacate the title. Since then, his actual fight career has been more rumors and question marks than reality.
What we also know is that Thurman, going hand in hand with career events of the last two years or so, has also experienced a life-changing personal event. He fell in love.
Thurman met Priyana Thapa a few months after the Porter fight while the Nepalese beauty worked in a Tokyo nightclub owned by her father. It was love at first sight and a whirlwind romance began. Thurman spent as much time as he could in Tokyo, sharing time with Thapa and moving towards creating a more permanent relationship. He eventually proposed and then, shortly after decisioning Danny Garcia, flew back to Asia to meet her parents and formally ask for her hand.
?On our first date it was her birthday,? Thurman told USA Today. ?And I said, ?Allow me to celebrate your birthday with you.? I just wanted her company, and I felt complete?it?s like a gift. I never thought it would happen, but it just did. After our first date she stole my heart.?
?If you give her one ounce of kindness, she gives you back four,? Thurman added in a piece posted by the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) website. ?I love everything about her.?
On June 30 of last year, Thurman and Thapa got married in Kathmandu, Nepal in a traditional Nepalese wedding ceremony.
In recent videos and photos, Thurman has never looked happier?and, at the same time, never so far away from being in fighter mode.
The PBC publicity on Thurman has always painted him as some sort of savage poet, described on the company website as ?equal parts force and finesse.? He?s a guy who, before he beats you up, plays with his Chihuahuas, Liberty and Nova, then goes and plays flute on a hill by a lake with birds floating by him majestically before weeping openly in a barbershop while getting his hair braided. All hype has some basis in reality, so it?s not a stretch to say that Thurman is, maybe, a different breed of prizefighter.
To extend this line of thought a bit further, it?s quite possible that this man with an overflowing heart and joyous soul is increasingly less interested in the nasty and brutal world of big-time boxing.
Just juxtapose his June, 2016 all-out war with Shawn Porter against his March, 2017 effort against Danny Garcia. Against Porter, he fought viciously like a man set out to prove something. Against Garcia, he fought cautiously like a man who now had something to lose.
Maybe finding love and preparing for a family has taken the fight out of the man. Maybe this assumption is way off. But Thurman would not be the first fighter to lose his fire and drive after life became too happy, too comfortable. Time will tell whether Thurman?s absence from the ring is ONLY about injury or whether the love of a woman, who Thurman admits is not at all fond of him fighting, has nudged him away from a life of high-risk combat.
In the meantime, the jokes will be made. ?One Time? Thurman is called ?Some Time? Thurman in some circles. People will laugh about him wanting nothing to do with Errol Spence or Terence Crawford, about running scared, all the way to the hills of Nepal. But where?s the joke in falling madly in love and living a happy, peaceful life away from the ring? If anything, Thurman has gotten the better end of the deal.
Then again, people are reading Boxing.com here, not TrueLoveStories.com. If anything, fans would like to see some closure to Thurman?s half-fulfilled promise?come back to reclaim his throne or permanently abdicate.
