Khan now ranked #2 by WBC at 147 in February ratings

By Boxing News - 02/04/2013 - Comments

khan4321By Scott Gilfoid: The World Boxing Council has given Amir Khan (27-3, 19 KO’s) a very generous #2 ranking at welterweight in their new February ranking despite Khan having lost two out of his last three fights and never having fought at welterweight before.

I don’t know what the WBC’s system for ranking is but that’s like rewarding Khan for failure, isn’t it? Khan loses two out of his last three fights, and the WBC responds by pushing him to #2 in a division he’s never fought in. I don’t understand that, but I can kind of guess why the WBC is doing this.

By pushing Khan to #2, the WBC is putting Khan in position to get his dreamed about mega fight against WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr., if Mayweather has the desire to take that fight.

The WBC can push Khan to #1 if they want to and order Mayweather to fight him, but if Mayweather doesn’t see it as an appealing fight, then he’ll just vacate his WBC 147 lb. strap and the WBC will be left with the fragile-chinned Khan having to fight either Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero or the knockout artist Luis Carlos Abregu for the WBC welterweight title.

Abregu would likely knock Khan out, and then the WBC’s high ranking of Khan would be for nothing. A Khan-Guerrero or Khan-Abregu fight probably isn’t what the WBC had in mind when they decided to give Khan an inflated ranking. I’m betting they want the Khan-Mayweather fight due to the big cash – and the sanctioning fees – that would come from that fight.

I hate to say it but Mayweather probably isn’t going to fight Khan because he already said he didn’t like Khan’s fighting style after watching him shoving Lamont Peterson around the ring in their fight in December 2010.

Mayweather said he thought Khan should have been disqualified in that fight for all the pushing that he was doing to Peterson, and he didn’t like Khan’s running. Khan was literally running from Peterson from the 4th round on, and when he wasn’t running, he was shoving and grabbing his head and pulling down on it to keep from being worked over on the inside.

I just don’t see Khan as deserving of a #2 WBC ranking at 147. Losing two out of his last three fights isn’t something that should lead to Khan being given a high ranking. I mean, why would the WBC do that?

Khan still hasn’t redeemed himself after his losses to Peterson and Danny Garcia, because he was matched against an unranked lightweight named Carlos Molina in his last fight in December. Beating a non-top 15 ranked guy from a division below him shouldn’t be something that leads to Khan receiving a high ranking by the WBC.



Comments are closed.