Ahead of his upcoming pay-per-view main event, Sebastian Fundora was apparently asked about two body parts in particular: his hand and Keith Thurman’s mouth.
A hand contusion Fundora suffered in sparring led to his WBC junior middleweight title defense against Thurman being delayed. Their match was originally supposed to take place this past October. Instead, it will be this March 28 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“Camp has been good since recovering from the hand injury,” Fundora said in a press release. “We never stopped training. We just slowed down on some things that we do. We always figure out ways to work, because this is an all-year sport. This isn’t seasonal. I don’t think about this [as] a training camp. This is my job. This is a lifestyle.”
And some good apparently came from an otherwise unfortunate situation.
“Having more time to focus on one opponent is always a blessing,” Fundora said. “We wish it didn’t happen this way with the injury, but we’ll take advantage of the extra time. It was disappointing to have to postpone the fight, but things happen in boxing and in life. You just have to roll with the punches. Not being able to use my hands as much as I wanted was challenging. For a period of time, we couldn’t do that. So I had to figure out a way to make sense of it.”
Fundora, 23-1-1 (15 KOs), won two world titles because of an injury Thurman suffered. Thurman was supposed to challenge Tim Tszyu for the WBO belt in March 2024, and Fundora was supposed to fight Serhii Bohachuk on the undercard for the vacant WBC title.
When Thurman got hurt and had to pull out, Fundora substituted into the main event, which now had both belts on the line. After a bloody battle, Fundora triumphed via split decision.
After that, Fundora spent nearly a year off – while awaiting a fight with Errol Spence that never came to fruition – and returned in March 2025 with a quick win over Chordale Booker. Fundora then vacated his WBO title so that he could face Tszyu again. Fundora dominated their rematch, and Tszyu had enough after seven rounds.
Thurman, 31-1 (23 KOs), is a 37-year-old former unified welterweight titleholder who has been incredibly inactive in recent years. He has only fought twice since losing to Manny Pacquiao in July 2019. Thurman outpointed Mario Barrios in February 2022 and made short work of Brock Jarvis in March 2025.
“Beating this former world champion will make a big statement,” said the 28-year-old Fundora. “I still feel like I’m at the top of the division. I don’t think we’ve lost any momentum. We just had to reschedule. We’re not hiding from anybody. This is gonna remind everyone that we are at the top.”
Given how little Thurman’s done in the ring in this decade, he’s had to use his mouth to help sell the fight. Fundora is taking that tactic in stride.
“Keith’s trash talk is good for TV – that’s what I’ll say,” Fundora said. “He’s always been the bad guy going into a fight because of that. And he backs it up a lot. But this time he’s not gonna be able to back it up.
“I’m not distracted by the talking. It doesn’t bother me one bit. Maybe if he wasn’t as well-known as he is, it could have caught me off-guard. But when I step into the ring with these guys, I expect them to hate my guts. I expect that they wanna get rid of me. That’s boxing. We’re in a competitive sport and we want to do the same thing to each other. It’s nothing personal, but we both gotta do what we gotta do.”
David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.
