Keith Thurman and Tim Tszyu could meet this summer in a non-PPV event. The two were supposed to fight last year on March 30th, but Thurman suffered a biceps injury and had to pull out.
(Credit: No Limit Boxing)
Thuman (30-1, 22 KOs) will return on March 12th against Brock Jarvis in Sydney, Australia. Tszyu is also expected to take a tune-up fight before they meet in the summer.
“Keith Thurman and Tim Tszyu, who could see their canceled fight from last year be rescheduled for the summer as a non-PPV,” said Dan Rafael on his site.
Hopefully, Thurman can fight Jarvis without suffering another physical breakdown, which could delay his fight with Tszyu unless he wants to go straight into the match.
Thurman is 36, but an old one. Injuries are a constant thing with him, and he hasn’t improved his situation by failing to stay active. For example, he’s fought just three times in the last eight years since 2017, and that’s not just injuries that have kept him out of the ring.
The former WBO junior middleweight champion Tszyu (24-2, 17 KOs) has seen his career bottom out, losing his last two fights to Sebastian Fundora and Bakhram Murtazaliev.
The loss to Fundora wasn’t so bad, as Tszyu suffered a bad cut and fought through the blood with limited vision. However, his third-round knockout defeat to Murtazaliev was brutal, as he was dropped four times on October 19th in Orlando, Florida.
There wasn’t any excuse Tszyu could make for that defeat. Murtazaliev had blown him out, and he failed to adjust after the first knockdown.
It’s questionable why Tszyu would be interested in fighting Thurman because he’s not well known with the younger boxing fans who have never seen him fight before because it’s been years since his last bout in 2022. To the younger fans, they just know him as an old guy with thinning haie that gives interviews on YouTube and pulls out of fights due to injuries.
The older fans who remember Thurman have given up on him a long time ago and won’t be excited at seeing him back. He lost to 40-year-old Manny Pacquiao in 2019, and that’s all you need to do about ‘One Time.’ He wasn’t a great fighter even when he was active. He was just a belt holder.
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