By Radio Rahim

On March 4th, Keith Thurman (28-0, 22 KOs) unified the WBC, WBA welterweight titles with a twelve round split-decision victory over Danny Garcia (33-1, 19 KOs) on Saturday, from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The judges scored it 116-112 Thurman, 115-113 Thurman and 115-113 Garcia. 

Thurman vs. Garcia reached 5.1 million viewers on CBS, the largest audience for a primetime boxing broadcast since 1998 and up 30 percent over last June’s CBS televised fight between Thurman and Shawn Porter.

The fight started with a bang as Thurman took the fight to Garcia, but after a few rounds the contest quickly became a very technical bout where Thurman was using his legs staying on the move to create distance for a boxing match where his jab was utilized as a big weapon.

Arum was impressed by the big audience that tuned in on CBS, but felt the boxing public should have received a very exciting fight - which in turn would have generated a big buzz for the sport. Instead of fireworks, the veteran promoter felt the two talented welterweights took very few chances in the contest and neither one was prepared to put it all on the line.

"Garcia and Thurman are very good fighters, but it was a very disappointing fight, because if guys have an audience like that, the [fans] deserve like in the days when Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns were fighting and make it a battle. Neither guy was prepared to risk anything and take the fight to the other guy. As a result it was a fairly boring technical fight," Arum told BoxingScene.com.

"They are both good fighters and I don't think boxing was served well by their performances. It certainly was good for boxing in the sense that it went over the air on a big network like CBS and performed as well as it did - and that's true. It showed what we always believed, that boxing is a sport that attracts a lot of people so that part was great. If that fight would been a barn-burner, that would have made it even a greater night for the sport of boxing."