Thurman holds on
THE BATTLE OF UNBEATENS Saturday night at Barclays Center lived up to its hype.
Keith Thurman won a split decision over Danny Garcia in a welterweight unification bout with Thurman adding the WBC belt to his WBA championship before a raucous Brooklyn crowd of 16,533.
Thurman (28-0-1, 22 KO’s) got scores of 116-112 and 115-113. Garcia (33-1, 19 KO’s), favored by a majority of the fans who booed the announcement of the winner, won one card, 115-113. “I thought outboxed him,” said Thurman, now 7-0 in title fights. “I thought it was a clear victory, but Danny came to fight. I knew when it was split and I had that widespread, I knew it had to go to me.”
The first round of the fight saw both men land effective punches. However, it was Thurman who wobbled Garcia with a vicious overhand right, which prompted the packed crowd to rise from their seats.
Thurman dictated the tempo of the fight, catching Garcia coming in numerous times. “One Time” consistently tagged Garcia with stinging right hands that put noticeable blemishes on the WBC champion’s face.
In the fourth round, Garcia started to pick up some short-lived momentum as he was able to land a few glancing blows to Thurman’s body.
Thurman took back control by being more active and cutting the ring off. As a result, he was able to create the better angles for his punches. In the middle rounds the action slowed down, but still saw both men doing what they could to win rounds. JEFF BACHNER/DAILY NEWS
Thurman, a knockout artist, had no regrets about his conservative approach. “I was not giving the fight away,” he said. “I felt like we had a nice lead, we could cool down. I felt like we were controlling the 3-minute intervals in each and every round.”
In the 12th round Thurman wisely danced away from Garcia in effort not to make a careless mistake. The crowd began chanting “Danny” as he landed a few good body shots to Thurman against the ropes. “I thought I pushed the fight like a true champion and did enough to get the victory,” Garcia said.
On the undercard, Brooklyn native Richardson Hitchins, a two-time Golden Gloves champion ad 2016 Olympian, made his pro debut an impressive one, knocking out Mario Perez at 1:38 of the first round “It means a lot,” Hitchins said. “It’s like my second home because I won two Golden Gloves in that ring. It was special. I had my friends and family here. When Leonard (Ellerbe) gave me the call and told me that I’m fighting in the Barclays Center, I couldn’t believe it.”