Warren: Khan has no margin for error against Diaz

By Boxing News - 04/26/2013 - Comments

khan6By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan’s former promoter Frank Warren believes that Khan has no margin of error for his fight tomorrow night against Julio Diaz (40-7-1, 29 KO’s) in Sheffield. While Warren expects Khan to win this fight by knockout, he feels that Khan can’t afford to make any mistakes because it could hurt his career potentially if he gets knocked out and takes yet another crushing defeat.

Khan goes into this fight having lost two out of his last three fights and that kind of tells you how bad things are going for him right now. Things are so bad that his promoters at Golden Boy still aren’t willing to put him in with an actual contender. Diaz isn’t ranked in the top 15 and neither was Khan’s previous opponent lightweight Carlos Molina.

Warren said in his column at thesun.co.uk “There’s no margin for error…any slip-ups will see Khan Khan’s earning capacity dip drastically and his future opportunities seriously diminish to leave him in boxing wilderness.”

I totally agree with Warren. If Khan can’t even beat a fighter like Diaz, then where does he go? I can’t imagine Showtime will want to continue their contract with Khan if he loses this fight because that would be three losses out of his last four fights, and Showtime doesn’t tend to have fighters under contract with their network when they’re career is going like that.

I imagine Khan’s fights will continue to be televised in the UK no matter how bad things go for him. After all, British heavyweight Audley Harrison is still having his fights televised in the UK, and he’s got a whole bunch of losses. But where does Khan go if he can’t even beat a guy like Diaz.

It’s not as if Golden Boy can keep putting Khan in fights against 2nd tier fighters for the remainder of the career with Showtime dutifully televising them over and over again. Showtime will want Khan to fight a 1st tier fighter, and if guys like Diaz and Breidis Prescott are blasting him out, then I imagine Khan could find himself in a situation where he won’t have his fights televised on Showtime for too much longer.

I think Khan has two more fights with his Showtime contract, and they’ve not gotten a great deal thus for with their contract. Khan beat Carlos Molina in his last fight, and now he’s facing another 2nd tier fighter in Julio Diaz.

After this fight, Khan will be sitting out for a long stretch while he waits for the smoke to clear between the Lucas Matthysse vs. Lamont Peterson, and Danny Garcia vs. Zab Judah fights. The winner of those fights will likely face each other, although Garcia’s dad Angel Garcia said they don’t have any kind of agreement that Garcia will face the winner of the Matthysse-Peterson fight.

However, the conventional wisdom is that Khan will fight the winner of all of those fights, and all he has to do is beat 2nd tier fighter Julio Diaz on Saturday night. Golden Boy has put Khan on easy street in letting him get an easy fight to get to the finals of the tourney, while the other fighters have some difficult fights ahead of them.



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