Thurman argues stoppage came early despite taking sustained shots from Fundora in sixth round
Keith Thurman criticized the referee after his sixth-round stoppage loss to Sebastian Fundora in Las Vegas. The former champion said the fight was ended before he could turn it around.
Thurman’s issue was with referee Thomas Taylor stepping in before he could work his way back into the fight.
“Whoever the f*** that referee was [Thomas Taylor], don’t hire him for main event s*** ever again, man — real talk,” Thurman said at the post-fight press conference.
The fight itself told a harsher story. Thurman was clipped early, his legs dipped in the second, and he spent long stretches reacting to Fundora’s pressure and volume. By the sixth, the exchanges were one-way, with Fundora letting combinations go and forcing the referee’s hand.
Thurman disagreed with the call. “Do you remember Erik Morales vs Marcos Maidana? Do you remember how many times people fought with broken orbital bones? S*** is not even broken, man. Never got dropped in the whole fight.”
He pointed to what he believed was building in the rounds. “The referee told me in the locker room, ‘Show me something — move your feet, duck your head, [and] I won’t stop the fight’. I wasn’t buckled, he just jumped in like a white rabbit.”
Thurman’s argument rests on timing. He believed Fundora’s workrate would create openings as the rounds built, with wider punches and looser positioning giving him a chance to counter.
“The people were standing on their feet. He was getting comfortable swinging big and swinging wide. He’s a volume puncher and the referee reacted to that,” Thurman said. “Four more minutes, it would have been a lot of fun, I promise. I was waiting [for a mistake].”
He pointed to previous fights as a reference. “[Brian] Mendoza caught him late. I was starting to catch him a little bit… Fundora gets sloppy around round seven, round eight.”
That was the plan. Draw Fundora into a higher pace, let the openings come, then meet him in the pocket once the shots widened.
“We were on the verge of that sweet spot where we were ready to go toe to toe, blow to blow, and the referee couldn’t handle the violence.”
The problem for Thurman is what happened before that point. He was on the back foot, taking clean shots, and not returning enough to show control of the exchanges. Fundora dictated the distance, kept the punches flowing, and never gave Thurman a stretch where he could set his feet and turn the fight.
Thurman wanted more rounds. The referee saw enough.
