WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (left) won a close, 12-round decision over Shawn Porter Saturday night in Brooklyn.
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Porter mauled Thurman during the ninth round, when a Porter right hand opened a sizeable gash over Thurman’s left eye. The victor of this fight would prove they not only belonged near to the top of the welterweight division, but possibly at the top.
Many in the crowd of 12,718 at Barclay’s Center booed the decision. Both guys didn’t really do the typical, take it slow early, approach.
The 27-year-old Thurman landed several solid lefts that either wobbled or staggered Porter as he won the close contest at the Barclays Center arena in NY by scores of 115-113 on all three judges scorecards. In all, the good friends who rose together through the amateur ranks fired more than 1,200 punches at each other, the overwhelming majority thrown with bad intentions. Porter, a former IBF welterweight champion, is 26-1-1 but hasn’t fought in almost a year since impressively handling highly touted Adrien Broner.
Now, Thurman and Porter get to headline a prime-time card on free TV. He kept up with the same intensity and game plan, attacking the body and breaking Thurman down. For the 1 time he was coming forward in the fight. Hurd would shoulder his way inside and try to land that nasty right uppercut again, and Molina would return fire with a wide left hook.
The Keith Thurman-Shawn Porter welterweight showdown was well worth the wait. There was a lot of dirty boxing, pushing against the ropes, and no room to breathe between punches.
Porter has entirely shed that style, chasing and pounding Thurman with hard punches to the head and body in the second round, letting his intentions known. But Thurman (27-0, 22 knockouts) landed the more effective punches.
For instance, Thurman’s clean right hand-left hook combination buckled Porter’s knees late in the third round, then the 27-year-old champion wobbled his opponent again with a left hook in Round 10 and an even more vicious head-swiveling hook in Round 11. In my opinion, after 7, this was a 5-2 or 4-3 type of fight toward Porter.
As recently as two years ago, Thurman and Porter sparred at the St. Petersburg Boxing Gym, but this was more than a sparring session. While you could argue in favor of letting Moilna walk away from the fight under his own power, he was suffering a lot of damage and there was no point to it. The back and forth was unbelievable. In the opening of the third, a red welt began forming on the left side of Thurman’s lower back. Referee Ricky Gonzalez stopped the bout 2:02 into the 10th and final round.
From the tenth round through the end of the fight, both men dug in and did their best to inflict damage.
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“I think I won the fight, ” Porter said, “but I’m satisfied because the competitor came out tonight”. The judges decided by unanimous decision by the scores of 115-113, 115-113, and 115-113 that Keith Thurman was still the WBA World Welterweight Champion.
