NEW YORK — After 22 months out of the ring because of injuries, welterweight world titleholder Keith Thurman made a triumphant — but sometimes difficult — return to the ring on Saturday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Thurman looked sharp, fast and powerful for most of the fight but had some mid-fight problems in an entertaining majority decision victory over the game Josesito Lopez to retain his 147-pound world title for the fifth time.
Thurman scored a second-round knockdown, weathered a harsh storm in the seventh round and won by scores of 117-109 and 115-111 on two scorecards while one judge had it 113-113 in the main event of the Premier Boxing Champions on Fox card before 9,623. ESPN had Thurman winning, 117-110.
Thurman (29-0, 22 KOs), 30, of Clearwater, Florida, had not boxed since a decision win over Danny Garcia, also at Barclays Center, to unify world titles in March 2017 because of post-fight surgery on his right elbow. When his elbow had healed and he was just starting to begin working out again, he suffered a deep bone bruise on his left hand that extended his layoff even longer. It was because of the layoff that Thurman had to vacate the belt he won from Garcia because he was unable to make a mandatory defense and he came into the fight with Lopez having boxed only twice since July 2015.
But though Thurman had not boxed for almost two years, he had his rhythm and timing from the outset. He punched with authority with both hands, fired hard jabs and moved well.
Thurman unleashed his power in the final seconds of the second round when he landed a clean left hook to the chin that dropped Lopez to all fours. Lopez was up at the count of six but Thurman continued to pound him over the final few seconds of the round.
Thurman landed numerous cracking punches to the head and body early in the fourth and it was a surprise that Lopez (36-8, 19 KOs), 34, of Riverside, California, remained upright.
Thurman was moving on his toes, firing punches upstairs and downstairs and sometimes planting his feet and landing his jab and hard right hands. By the sixth round, Lopez face was showing the impact of the punches as it was turning red and swelling on the left side.
But the tenor of the fight changed in the seventh round when Lopez rocked Thurman with two right hands and spent most of the round chasing him around and landing punches.
Thurman was unsteady, getting knocked back and looked very weary as the round ended. Lopez had another good round in the eighth although he didn’t land anything as telling as he did in the seventh.
Thurman had regained control of the fight as they went into the final rounds. He continued to move, box and mix in hard right hands and combinations to the head. Lopez, however, never gave in, pressed him and tried to rough him up on the inside in the 11th and 12th rounds.