Undefeated welterweight Keith ?One Time? Thurman has called out pound for pound king and similarly unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr following an impressive 8th round TKO over veteran Luis Collazo to retain his WBA welterweight title on Sunday, Manila Time.
Thurman, backed by a huge hometown crowd, landed several power shots to the head and body in the first four rounds of the fight and clearly dominated Collazo who had previously lost to WBC welterweight Silver champion Amir Khan who has also being fruitlessly chasing Mayweather for a title bout.
Thurman cut Collazo on his right eye in round six and then connected with several powerful punches that opened up the cut even further in the seventh round.
One second into the eighth round the corner of Collazo threw in the towel realizing that Collazo was out of it.
In his last fight Thurman easily defeated Robert Guerrero over twelve rounds last March 7, 2015. Guerrero also went the distance with Mayweather but lost by a smaller margin on the scorecards of the three judges compared to Thurman who won by a near shutout.
With the win Thurman improved his clean slate to 26-0 with 22 knockouts while Collazo, a former champion dropped to 26-7.
In a post-fight interview Thurman called out Mayweather telling him ?I?m a young, strong champion Floyd, come get it. I?m undefeated like you baby. Come take my O baby! I?m ready, I?m ready.?
The unbeaten welterweight champion said he had trained hard for this fight and wanted to give Collazo ?all respect. He?s a great veteran. He came out and fought hard and caught me with a great body shot. But I took it and endured it like a great champion does and didn?t go down.?
The punch that clearly hurt Thurman in the fifth round was what he described as ?a beautiful left hook. I was extended an my elbow wasn?t able to come back in time to block the shot. I was reaching out and it really got underneath there, right in the perfect spot. I would say 95 % of my wind was gone but with 5% it went to my brain. I thought about taking a knee. That was the best body shot thus far in my career. We survived that round, we recovered. We used a portion of the next round to recover. We boxed smart and got the TKO victory.
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