Khan is not Ricky Hatton for Mayweather; the fan interest won’t be as high

By Boxing News - 01/08/2014 - Comments

khan5656By Scott Gilfoid: There’s been some talk about how Amir Khan (28-3, 19 KO’s) will bring the same amount of interest to his proposed fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) than Ricky Hatton did when he fought Mayweather Jr. back in December of 2007. The Hatton-Mayweather fight brought in 850,000 PPV buys.

At the time it was considered a success because Hatton was a British fighter, and he wasn’t well known in the United States. However, Hatton had an unbeaten record going for him at 43-0 with 31 knockouts. That in itself helped sell the fight. Khan doesn’t have that.

Khan’s lost 3 fights, and has been knocked out twice. He barely beat Marcos Maidana in a fight where the referee was frequently in between him and Maidana during the crucial last three rounds when Khan was badly hurt.

Khan hasn’t picked up a significant win since the Maidana fight, and that was 4 years ago. All Khan’s victories – Paul McCloskey, Zab Judah, Carlos Molina and Julio Diaz – since that time have been against minor players. Judah and Diaz were over-the-hill, and McCloskey and Molina were little known guys without much talent.

4 years is a long time to go in between beating a good opponent. I don’t know about you, but I don’t rate Judah, Diaz, Molina and McCloskey as being top guys. Where’s Lucas Matthysse, Danny Garcia, and Ruslan Provodnikov?

Why didn’t Khan fight or beat those guys. Garcia knocked him out, and Khan never bothered to fight him again. The same with Breidis Prescott. He knocked Khan out, and Khan didn’t bother fighting him again.

If Mayweather is counting on people getting excited about the Khan fight and seeing it in the same regards as his fight with Hatton then he’s going to be badly disappointed. Hatton and Khan are worlds apart for what the two of them accomplished during their careers.

Hatton had a limelight with his career. You can’t say the same thing for Khan. I guess the zenith of his career was his victories over Maidana, Andriy Kotelnik and Judah. But like I said, Judah was a shot fighter, and Maidana probably would have knocked Khan out if that referee working the Khan-Maidana fight hadn’t involved himself so much in the last 3 rounds.

If Mayweather is fine with getting around 800,000 PPV buys for the Khan fight, then by all means he should take that fight. But if he’s looking to get over 1 million PPV buys for his May fight then he’s going to need a more relevant fighter capable of attracting PPV buys in the U.S. Maidana is definitely one guys that can do it for Mayweather. I think Danny Garcia is another. They won’t bring in big PPV numbers like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, but they’ll certainly bring in a lot more buys than a Khan-Mayweather fight will.



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