LAS VEGAS – Keith Thurman is a truth-teller, and there’s no hiding that he’s 37 years old and has fought just 15 rounds over the past seven years while beset by some injuries.
Yet Thurman, 31-1 (23KOs), is also a former unified welterweight champion who has drawn from the wisdom of all 30 years of his boxing experience to chase a way to upset 6ft 6ins Sebastian Fundora and become WBC 154lbs champion on Saturday night at MGM Grand.
“Look, man, when you talk about a fight before a fight, you don’t know what you’re going to see – you don’t know what you’re really gonna get,” Thurman told BoxingScene before appearing at a public conversation on Wednesday at the hotel.
“But this is the human dilemma. We have an intellectual mind, so we’re going to gravitate towards all the knowledge we have to predict the outcome of an event we don’t have actual knowledge of. So what can Keith Thurman do? Keith Thurman is 37. Keith Thurman has had lay-offs. Keith Thurman has had three surgeries. These are just facts.”
Thurman is laying a trap by listing these vulnerabilities, of course.
Dismiss him, and you neglect who he was, reigning as unified welterweight champion after compiling victories against the likes of Robert Guerrero, Shawn Porter and Danny Garcia nearly a decade ago.
Toss him aside, in favor of the uniquely framed Fundora 23-1-1 (15KOs) and it disregards his past two victories, over recent welterweight champion Mario Barrios and then journeying to Australia to dispose of Brock Jarvis by third-round TKO in 2025.
Thurman reminds that it’s Fundora, 28, who postponed their planned date in October with a hand injury.
“So as people are analyzing, they’re doing it off this kind of intel,” Thurman said. “They didn’t see me in camp. No one has seen Sebastian move. Sebastian’s coming off an injury, and we don’t know the significance of that injury to be honest. We don’t know if he had to protect himself through this camp to not have a recurring injury. There’s a lot of things we don’t know.”
Thurman only losing to record eight-division champion Manny Pacquiao is no shame, and as he looks to the distance beyond Saturday night, victory could propel him to some big-time fights.
With former 154lbs champion Tim Tszyu, whom Thurman was supposed to fight before injuring his arm and seeing replacement opponent Fundora step in to capture the WBC and WBO belts in 2024, bound for a date later this year against three-belt welterweight champion Errol Spence Jnr, the winner would be a natural foe.
As would former undisputed 154lbs champion Jermell Charlo, who is said to be considering a return.
“Keith Thurman has done a lot of great things in boxing,” Thurman said. “People want to know if he’s going to do something great right now. How much more does he have left? I know the answer to that.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Sebastian Fundora is not fighting someone on his level. He’s not fighting a peer. This is the first real veteran – remember, this is a gladiator sport, with art-of-war tactics – and we’ve seen throughout boxing history how veterans have upset the young man.
“The veteran has these plays, these moments, where they get to prove you need to respect people who have been in battles and know what it means to be in tough fights, and have multiple tricks up their sleeves. With 30 years of experience, this is Vegas, baby, I’m going to put on a great show, and you might just see a rabbit come out of the hat.”
One of the creative maneuvers Thurman has done in training camp is to remove a chain link holding a heavy bag to a beam above him, allowing the 5-feet-9.5ins challenger to better practice overhand rights at Fundora’s head.
“I’m going to have to reach a bit,” Thurman explained. “His chin is not 6-5. There’s a few spots on the human body that are critical. You’ve got the temple lobes on the left and the right side. The nose can be busted, but it doesn’t knock somebody out. It’s not a kill shot. But the chin has nerves.
“Those two nerves send a signal to the brain and it buckles the knees. So the chin is a critical shot and I know my overhand right may not be [reaching] the temple. That’s way up there. But I still have to go up there – it’s only a little bit of a stretch – to get to that chin. I’ll be reaching with a lot of my shots.”
He’s also targeting Fundora’s slender midsection.
“When it comes to the lower body, you have the two lower ‘floating ribs’ on the left side and right side,” he said. “Those are the weakest ribs because they’re subject to the pain. And then the solar plexus is another weak spot, to ‘knock the wind out of him’ by snatching a pocket of air from your lungs and making it very difficult to breathe. So I’ve got one vital spot up top and three down below. It could be a head or body shot. I’m going to let him show me what mistakes he’ll make and I’ll capitalize on my expertise.”
The mind knows. Can the advanced-aged body deliver?
“It’s very easy to push back everything to tomorrow: ‘I’ll do this tomorrow.’,” he said. “‘Maybe I don’t have to do this right now.’ ‘Maybe there’ll be another chance, another opportunity.’
“But there comes a time in life where you’ve had a lot of ‘tomorrows’, and you hit a time where you feel you’re running out of time. For us men, later on in life, it’s called that mid-life crisis, and the older men reflect, ‘How’d I realize my time?’
“Life is not a life to be filled with regrets. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m fighting. People ask me hy? ‘He’s 37 years old; went through so much; what’s he get out of it?’ There’ll be a day I can’t fight, and if I don’t fight today… if I retire today and never fight again, there’s going to be a day for me later in life, when I’m reflecting, and I ask, ‘Did you give your career all you have?’”
So, on Saturday, 11 years to the month he fought in his promoter Premier Boxing Champions’ first main event, also at the MGM Grand, Thurman seeks to perform like a classic-rock band, hitting the notes and arousing those vintage memories as the Eagles will be doing that same night at the Sphere.
“Honestly, I’ve given so much to this sport,” Thurman said. “For some reason, the inactivity has allowed me to rekindle some kind of love. My passion has been sparked. And this little voice inside my head has come on to say, ‘You’ve got more. You can do more. Let’s go for it one more time. Make something great happen one more time.’
“That’s what this night is all about. Not only do I get to make history happen, I get to make it all happen in the sport I love. The sport I chose to do when I was a little boy. I pushed and persevered and tried again… I love the life I live, and I look forward to Saturday night.
“Sebastian Fundora is a terrific champion, but this is 30 years of boxing experience that the world is going to see in those moments Saturday night.”
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
