By Thomas Gerbasi

Saturday night, Keith Thurman returns to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to face Danny Garcia in what most would say is the biggest fight of his career. The WBA welterweight champion doesn’t necessarily agree.

“I actually put it in my head and say it’s nothing special,” Thurman said.

What? Two unbeaten champions in their prime fighting in a unification bout isn’t special?

Thurman doesn’t miss a beat.

“It is for you, the spectator,” he explains. “It’s my day job. My day job hasn’t changed. I’ve boxed my whole life. I’ve never clocked in and done another job since I was seven years old. I never got a paycheck outside of boxing. I never worked at Publix, I never worked at Domino’s, I never was somebody’s employee.”

Yet as the president and CEO of Keith Thurman, Inc., the 28-year-old isn’t in the same tax bracket as he was when making his name on the local scene in his native Florida. These days, Thurman isn’t just a belt holder; he’s a young man on the verge of making the move from star to superstar, a move that will accelerate with a win over Garcia on CBS this weekend. But he refuses to bite, refuses to make this anything more than another night in the office.

“My job has never changed,” he reiterates. “The platform upon which I perform my skills and my talent and how many spectators get to view who Keith Thurman is, that has changed. But the simple job of getting in the ring, putting on the gloves and going toe to toe with a man who signed a contract that states that he’s going to try to whip your ass, has never changed.”

That attitude alone marks Thurman as one of the most unique figures in today’s fight game, but those who have followed his career have always known that “One Time” isn’t cut from the same cloth as everyone else. There are no clichés in his vocabulary, none of the usual “fight talk” that passes for soundbites too often. And boxing is lucky to have him, because there is the distinct impression that whatever he chose to pursue, he was going to excel at.

What could that have been if not prizefighting? He’s stumped, but only for a second.

“Who knows,” Thurman said. “Inside some philosophy class, becoming an herbalist, an acupuncturist, just life. When I was a kid I thought I would get into computer graphics, massage therapy, web page design, sports medicine. It’s America. You can do whatever you want to do if that’s what you truly want to do if you put your best foot forward and you’re a hard working individual. What boxing has shown me, and in life what I’ve learned by becoming a successful individual is that success is built on determination and dedication.”

And boxing has always been it for the Clearwater product, who followed up a stellar amateur career with an even better professional one. And along the way, he’s kept everything in perspective. Never too high, never too low, never getting taken in by the trappings that come with success in the hardest game.
 
“I’m a realist,” he said. “I understand how real this sport of boxing is, and I chose this as a profession when I was a kid. I’m just ready for this and if I wasn’t ready, I wouldn’t have made it to where I am today. I wouldn’t be champion today. And it’s a sport. Sometimes people forget that. When you’re a kid, you play a sport for fun. When you’re a professional, you still do it for the fun and you do it for the income that will provide for your family and provide a certain kind of lifestyle for yourself. And as a sport, you all forget that this is my job and it’s fun. Win, lose or draw, I’m having fun. If I got knocked the f*** out, I’m having fun. I’m a special kind of breed. That’s what fighters are. Not everybody can be a boxer. Boxing is a whole other kind of sport. You gotta have a special mentality, a special heart to participate in this.”

That heart was never more evident than in the last “biggest fight” of Thurman’s career, a 2016 Fight of the Year candidate with Shawn Porter in Brooklyn last June. Like the upcoming Garcia bout, it was a clash of welterweights on top of their game, and unlike many highly anticipated matchups, this one lived up to the hype and possibly surpassed it.

I ask Thurman if he knew it was a special fight while he was in the ring. In typical understatement, he’ll simply say, “It was competitive and I knew that.”

From there, he breaks down the fight, mixing in his internal dialogue as the rounds piled up and it was clear that the bout was going to go down to the wire.

“The fight started the way that I wanted to, then it started to slip away from me, and then I pulled it back into control,” he recalled. “What ended up happening was I won the majority of the first four rounds the way I wanted to win them and then the fifth, sixth and seventh didn’t go the way that I wanted it to. His (Porter’s) aggressiveness and maybe a little bit of my lack of offense or overall ring generalship that just wasn’t on point. I knew that the judges might have scored the majority of those rounds in his favor and it was going to be in my best interest to win the eighth round. So I did win the eighth round.”

In a dead even fight against one of the top 147-pounders in the world, Thurman’s mind and focus were clear as he walked back to his corner after the eighth stanza.

“I sat back down and I said, ‘Keith, man, you are a betting man, and I’m pretty darn sure that this fight is a draw right now. Well this is not a 12-round fight anymore. You’re in a four-round fight; welcome back to the amateurs. You have to beat Shawn Porter for these four rounds – box smart, do what you have to do, don’t make any slip-ups, don’t let him hold you on the ropes, don’t give the judges any reason to give the kid these rounds. You need these rounds.’”

He got them, with all three judges rendering 115-113 scores for Thurman. In a 27-0, 1 NC career, this was the most important win, and one he wasn’t going to let get away from him.

“Nobody came to watch this fight become a draw,” he said. “I needed to win. I just dug deep, boxed smart and did what I had to do to get the victory.”

Over the course of those 12 rounds, the knockout artist proved that he could box, bang, adjust on the fly, and show those intangibles that lift good fighters into a different category. On Saturday, he’ll be asked to do it all again when he faces Philadelphia’s Garcia. For most, such a big fight produces a level of pressure that can be tough to deal with when the bell rings. Double that for someone trying to keep an “0” in his loss column. But again, Thurman flips the script on conventional wisdom.

“I got an ‘0’ and I’m not afraid to let it go,” he said. “If you can beat me, beat me. I’m a great fighter. I’m welterweight champion and I’ve been a great fighter since I was in the amateurs, always ranked at the top. I made a statement today in the gym, just talking, that if Keith Thurman was a liquor bottle, I’d be top shelf. (Laughs) I’m just a great fighter, and that means that nobody can beat Keith Thurman unless they’re a great fighter. If you’re the better man than me, I’m going to shake your hand and say, ‘Congratulations,’ because you didn’t beat a chump. And only another great man can beat me. And every single time that I step into the ring, no matter how great you are, I’m putting forth my best effort and it’s not easy to beat Keith Thurman when he puts forth his best effort. So that’s why I’m not afraid to let it go.”

That doesn’t mean he is expecting to, because for everything Keith Thurman knows about his day job, the one thing he doesn’t know is how to lose.

“I’ve got a lot of pride, a lot of determination and I don’t back down for nobody.”