By Thomas Gerbasi
When Lennox Lewis fought Evander Holyfield in March of 1999, the whole world was seemingly watching, especially if you had anything to do with the sport of boxing. In that sense, ten-year-old Keith Thurman was like everybody else.
“Everyone was excited about the fight,” recalled the WBA welterweight champion, who was invited to watch the heavyweight unification bout at his pastor’s house. “I’m watching the fight and it was boring. I believe I fell asleep halfway in, I woke up and I was more interested in going to this dude’s kitchen and playing with these sugar cubes.”
He laughs. Sugar cubes?
“It was the first time in my life I got to see sugar squared up into these little cubes,” Thurman continues. “And then there was a rematch and the pastor asked me if I wanted to go hang out for the rematch, and I said ‘No thanks, I’ll pass this time.’”
By the end of 1999, Thurman really wanted nothing to do with watching boxing, as he saw fellow Floridian and future training partner Winky Wright lose a controversial decision to Fernando Vargas.
“All I knew was that he was from St. Pete, so I was cheering him on,” Thurman said. “I was younger than a teenager at that point, and to me, he (Wright) won a minimum of nine out of 12 rounds. I watched that fight and watched that decision and said ‘Man, this is why I hate watching boxing. I’m never gonna watch boxing again.’”
Three years later, the newly-minted teenager decided that he was going to make boxing his career.
“I practically knew that this is what I wanted when I was seven years old, but it kind of solidified itself in me by the time I was 13, 14,” he said. “When I was 13 years old, I started winning national tournaments, and by the time I was 14, I had three national titles under my belt. It was at that moment I remember thinking about it at a club show that Ben Getty held in Clearwater. I won my fight but I was thinking, ‘You’re going to be 14 soon, you’ve been doing this for a long time, you’ve won three national titles. You keep this up, you might really turn pro one day.’ Right at 13, the beginning of my teen years, is when I was setting sights on the possibility of making this a true profession.”
This Saturday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Thurman defends his title against Shawn Porter in one of the most highly-anticipated fights of the year. For him to be here, fighting in a nationally televised main event with his world championship on the line, is one of boxing’s great tales, as the kid who didn’t want to watch boxing has been fighting for 20 of his 27 years.
Yeah, he’s far from typical.
“I don’t know, man,” he laughs. “Put me in the ring, put some gloves on me and I fight like a typical fighter if you ask me.”
But Thurman knows that he’s not like his peers in the fight business. Yeah, he’s been paying dues in the gym since he was a kid, he’s been through all the amateur tournaments and fought his way up the pro ladder. But boxing was never everything for him.
“I think why I’m so different is that I’ve always just wanted to be a kid,” he said. “Even to this day, if I see some of my old buddies, every once in a while they’ll ask me, ‘Oh, you’ve got an up and coming fight?’ But none of my friends paid attention to my boxing career until I had my first major fight on HBO. Then all my friends and their families started tuning into my fights and watching my career. But for the most part, I was always just Keith, who is a boxer. I was always hanging out and just doing what my friends were doing. If they were skateboarding, I was skateboarding. We were rollerblading, going down to the beach, hanging out at the arcade. I never really thought of boxing outside of the ring. So, to me, boxing was always just one aspect of my life.”
Thurman recalls having plenty of freedom as a youngster, and those are times he looks back at fondly as he remembers rollerblading or biking down to Clearwater beach without a care in the world.
“I would go down there with a few bucks in my pocket, and if you got thirsty, you could go ahead, grab a drink, grab a Little Debbie’s and you go about your way. That’s the kid’s life right there. $1.25, you’re good ‘til dinner.”
He pauses.
“I was such an outdoor kid growing up.”
Thurman hasn’t lost that kid in him, but that doesn’t mean he’s neglecting business. In fact, he had to grow up faster than most when he dropped out of high school at 16 to pursue his boxing career. It was a decision that even drew attention in the local newspaper, but Thurman was unwavering in his convictions.
“I said I’m not getting anything out of these guys,” Thurman recalled. “They’re not teaching me anything that I want to know. What’s the purpose of going to school besides learning something that you want to learn and using it in life? I’m pretty sure I found my career path, but I do understand what a lot of people were trying to warn me about, which is putting all your eggs in one basket.”
He understood, but he knew his path, and he was about to get an education of a different sort in a gym packed with the likes of world champions Winky Wright and Jeff Lacy.
“I can go back to school at any age, as long as I can still speak in proper sentences and read and write,” he said. “But at this time, I had an opportunity to train with the professionals. I was sparring with them, and I was always the young kid testing out everybody who was there to spar. I also got many, many great rounds in with Chad Dawson in his prime before he was world champion. Andre Berto was there too.”
Hearing Thurman talk about his formative years in the ring and in life, you can tell he is the sentimental type. But while most nostalgia is just that – something stuck in the past – everything Keith Thurman did had a bearing on what’s going to happen on Saturday night. In other words, he’s looking forward, not back, and he owes it to a unique fighting life.
“We had a lot of faith that we had the skills and the talent to make our dreams come true,” he said. “And all we’re doing is keeping that going.”
