MANDALAY BAY, LAS VEGAS, NV - Keith "One Time" Thurman (29-1) will return for the first in over 30 months when faces Mario Barrios (26-1) at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight will headline a Premier Boxing Champions on FOX pay-per-view.
Thurman dropped a split decision to future Hall of Famer Manny Pacquiao in last ring appearance which took place on July 20th, 2019.
If all goes well for the 33-year-old, he is expected to target one of the champions in the welterweight division.
One such target could be Terence "Bud" Crawford. The unbeaten WBO champion was last in action in November when he stopped Shawn Porter in 10 rounds.
The fight was close until the stoppage occurred. It was so close that Crawford's corner told him that he was in danger of losing prior to the 10th round. The warning paid dividends as Crawford turned it up a notch and became the only fighter to stop Porter. moments later.
Shortly after Wednesday's final press conference, Thurman was asked to assess Crawford's performance.
"I love that moment because that shows the dog in Crawford, that he is not there just to rely on the belt and to rely on the fact that he is the champion and they have to beat the champion. I do think he was inactive and I do think that it was wise of his coaches to let him know, 'wake up boy, wake up.' I do believe that he was slightly favored going into that round, I don't know how the judges really had it but I knew he was picking up momentum in the second half of the fight," Thurman stated.
"When he was moving really fast trying to counter Shawn, he was actually missing. He was trying to twitch hook and twitch uppercut and all that stuff was missing. About the 5th round he slowed down and Shawn slowed down. In slowing down, he started to hit the mark. I remember one time he won a round with one combo. It was like a one, two, three. Shawn doesn't land clean punches and Terence had good defense in that fight. It just wasn't as interesting as I wanted that whole fight to be. I actually gave him a new nickname that night, Crafty Crawford. I thought he was being crafty in there and I thought he needed to be crafty.
"Because he was working on focusing on what to do to Shawn, he had to show that he is a crafty fighter and land that beautiful punch in the later rounds and get those double knockdowns. The fight was over at that point. We saw Shawn and we saw his energy. We know his daddy stopped the fight but the fight was over. It is what it is. It was a good closing out performance - not a great overall performance - in my opinion, by Crawford. It was a terrific closing out performance since no one in the welterweight division had stopped Shawn Porter before that fight."
The fight against Porter was the last on Crawford's contract with long-time promoter Top Rank. The three-division is now a promotional free agent.
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