By Chris Williams: IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. is ducking his close friend Manny Pacquiao. Khan thinks Mayweather doesn’t want any part of fighting Pacquiao, the WBO welterweight champion.

Khan said this to RingTV: “I really think he [Mayweather] is ducking him because Manny Pacquiao is a huge name in America. He gets huge pay-per-view numbers and whoever he fights, he sells out the arena. But I heard Mayweather versus [Victor] Ortiz wasn’t even a sell out and there were a lot of tickets left. If it was Manny it would have been sold out straight away.”

What Khan doesn’t understand about Mayweather Jr. is that he’s a PPV star. That’s where he gets his huge numbers, not from attendance numbers at his fights. He doesn’t have a huge loyal Filipino following that will come from all across the United States and elsewhere around the world to see him fight. Mayweather’s popularity shows itself in his PPV numbers, which are generally better than Pacquiao’s. That’s the bottom line that Khan seems to be ignorant of. It’s the PPV numbers, not the attendance.

Pacquiao could have fought Mayweather in the past if he had agreed to the random blood testing that Mayweather Jr. wanted. Pacquiao was agreeable to the tests being random but wanted them to be halted three weeks before the fight. That was the fight killer. Now Pacquiao and his promoter don’t want to keep their training camp in the United States in getting ready for a fight against Mayweather.

This gets in the way of the USADA being able to test Pacquiao. With Pacquiao not agreeing to keep his camp in the U.S, it means that he would only be tested for half of his training camp by the USADA. Mayweather wants no part of fighting Pacquiao under those conditions and it’s easy to understand where he’s coming from. It would make it to where Pacquiao would have to be tested by another organization based in the Philippines during his time training there, and then getting tested by the USADA when Pacquiao comes over to the U.S in the final weeks of his training camp. That’s another fight killer. There’s no ducking from Mayweather. What we have here is Mayweather setting up the conditions for a fight with him and Pacquiao and his promoter opting not to follow those conditions. As such, no fight and there won’t be one either.

In the large scheme of things, Mayweather really won’t make all that much more fighting Pacquiao than he does other guys, so there’s no real loss from a missed fight against Pacquiao. The Pacquiao fight will bring in bigger numbers, but with Mayweather having to share the money 50-50 with Pacquiao instead of 80-20 or 90-10 with his opponents, Mayweather Jr. really doesn’t get that much more than he would if he fought someone like Ortiz again. The pay cut that he gives to Pacquiao drastically reduces what Mayweather could make and it’s probably not worth the trouble if Pacquiao isn’t going to keep his training camp in the U.S the entire 8 weeks so that he can be tested by the USADA.