By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan thinks WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) will likely lose to Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) in their fight on September 14th.
Khan doesn’t say why, but he does feel he’s got the skills to give Floyd a lot of problems with his hand speed and ability to put pressure on the 36-year-old Mayweather. It could be that Khan feels that the 22-year-old Canelo is lacking in those areas.
Khan said to the NYFightblock “Mayweather might be one step ahead of Canelo. Canelo’s style might fall short.”
The style that Khan is talking about is one where Canelo throws either one punch at a time or he throws a flurry, gets gassed out, and needs to rest for most of the remainder of the round to get his wind back. We saw a lot of that in his last fight against Austin Trout last April.
Canelo would throw a couple of flurries with most, if not all, of the punches missing and then he would rest and move his head to dodge the jabs. The judges liked the flurries despite the punches mostly hitting air and gave Canelo almost all of the first 8 rounds.
Khan likes his own chances against Mayweather and feels he matches up better with him than Canelo does, saying “Two things: speed and explosiveness, would help me beat Floyd. My speed takes away his defense.”
Khan may not be able to use his skills on Mayweather if he can’t get past IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander in December. I’m sure Khan is just answering questions about how he’d do against Mayweather, but it’s really premature for him to be even talking about the fight because he has such a big hurdle in front of him with Alexander. Khan was almost knocked out in his last fight against Julio Diaz last April and that would have been a disaster for Khan.
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