Former champion Keith “One Time” Thurman is in quarantine like most everyone else, but the Florida native has been keeping busy reading and looking back at his boxing career so when things start up again he won’t make the same mistakes that he did in his only career defeat to Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao last July.
Thurman in an interview with ESNEWS said he had several things he wished he could have changed heading into the Manny Pacquiao fight. He would change training camp location, not balloon in weight, and come up with a definitive gameplan.
He admit to being overweight not just for the Pacquiao fight but for his comeback bout against Josesito Lopez. He cut 35-pounds for the Lopez fight and ballooned up in weight again to and then cut the same amount of weight for Pacquiao, which he felt hindered his focus away from coming up with a good gameplan.
Going up to 35-pounds would have made him 182-pounds before cutting back down to 147 and weight cuts like that are taxing on the body and can sap energy on fight night.
“Several things, one I would actually probably change my training location,” Thurman told ESNEWS. “I would probably go out of town and try to focus more on a secluded training region. Outside of that, really I think the biggest flaw was weight management in 2019. I lost 35-pounds twice. That’s 70-pounds from November to when I fought Pacquiao, because November was my training camp for Josesito Lopez. We lost 35-pounds for Lopez and we gained the weight back and then we lost the 35-pounds again for Manny Pacquiao. Weight management was a really, really, bad negative. It doesn’t allow me to train where I’m focusing on all my boxing attributes because I’m focusing on endurance and weight management and shedding weight.
Thurman also believes having spent time in the ring with the Filipino legend would give him more confidence in preparing for a rematch since he now has first hand experience with Pacquiao’s style.
“The other thing, is to just have a definitive gameplan. Now that I’ve shared the ring with him it would be even easier to manifest a definitive gameplan,” said Thurman. “I was going with the flow. I noticed sometimes I need to rely on, like in multiple fights in my career, I was going with the flow, especially after the knockdown. I started to create a gameplan but at the end of the fight I pretty much didn’t execute it. I think the reason why I didn’t execute it is because it wasn’t fully premeditated.”
