Former unified welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman hasn’t fought since suffering his first professional loss to Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao in July 2019.
The Florida native is eager to get back into the ring and was training at the boxing gym when Fight Hype caught up with him and asked him questions on boxing and the upcoming Manny Pacquiao vs. Errol Spence bout on August 21.
Thurman believes the bigger and stronger Spence should win and gives him the edge especially if Pacquiao’s age catches up to him with the two year layoff and him being 42 years old.
When the topic of punching power came up and who hit him the hardest, he said Danny Garcia but also recognized that Pacuqiao hit him pretty hard.
“If we are gonna talk about power, for me nobody hit like Danny [Garcia],” said Thurman to Fight Hype on who hit harder Pacquiao, Garcia or Shawn Porter. “Danny felt like a big brick, Manny felt like a little brick. Now the weird part is Pacquiao’s hands just felt heavy.”
Thurman went on to give his own theory on why he believes Pacquiao hits so hard for his size and he thinks it could have something to do with the type of gloves he wears. Pacquiao is well known for fighting in the Mexican brand Cleto-Reyes, they use horsehair instead of foam padding, its also known as the punchers glove in the boxing world.
“I was looking at a picture that my dad framed up at his house. He took a picture of me and Pacquiao trading body blows and I was thinking to myself, after the fight I was constantly thinking, why do his fists feel like a rock?,” Thurman wondered.
“It was like awkward. Why do his fist feel so hard in the fight? I mean I don’t really care about that stuff that much, I mean I could handle it, it wasn’t devastating, it didn’t really feel like plaster but it felt like something, it felt like a rock. I thought does he do certain training? Does he build up callouses in his fists? Does he have more dense bone density in his hands? Does he do some Asian stuff? Who knows, and then looking at the picture I was like damn you know what? Pacquiao wore them old school Mexican Reyes gloves. Back when me and Ben Getty was knocking everybody out, we always wore those Mexican Reyes gloves. I was like what would it have felt like for Pacquiao if I had wore those Reyes and I just had that thought come across my mind.”
Even though he is confused by Pacquiao’s punching power he still believes Danny Garcia has the hardest punch he ever felt from a welterweight, but considers Pacquiao’s punch the hardest he felt from a little guy.
“Pacquiao he does hit hard, he hits fast, but as a welterweight it’s not the hardest punch I ever felt. It’s the hardest punch I ever felt coming from a little guy like Pacquiao. I never felt power from a little guy the way I felt it from Pacquiao, but Danny Garcia the way he plants his feet its almost like a power car the way he develops torque into his punches and he is no even a real welterweight and to me he was the hardest hitting welterweight that I faced,” said Thurman
