Maidana holds lead over Khan with 62% vote in Mayweather poll

By Boxing News - 02/04/2014 - Comments

By Chris Williams: WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) has the lead over Amir Khan (28-3, 19 KO’s) in the fan vote to select Floyd Mayweather Jr’s next opponent for May 3rd. As of this afternoon, Maidana has 62 percent of the vote in nearly 7,000 fans having voted. If this holds up then we could see Maidana as Mayweather’s next opponent.

Floyd’s uncle Jeff Mayweather says that fans are turned off towards the idea of Floyd facing a fighter like Khan, and he thinks this has turned Floyd’s interest towards possibly fighting Maidana.

“Any time you hear about Floyd fighting Amir Khan, it comes with negative feedback,” Jeff said to Mlive.com. “When you’re the best fighter in the world, you’re not used to negative feedback. Amir Khan doesn’t have a title and he hasn’t done anything to deserve a shot. People want to see Floyd against the guy who beat Adrien Broner. They want to compare the imitator against the genuine one.”

Jeff is right. Fans want to see Maidana fight the genuine Mayweather after beating the copycat fighter Broner, who clearly doesn’t have Mayweather’s style totally down pat. By setting up a Mayweather-Maidana fight, you get to see the revenge aspect with Floyd showing Broner how it’s supposed to be done by out-boxing Maidana rather than standing in front of him and trying to slug it out.

The whole revenge scenario works well, and it’s something that Showtime and Golden Boy Promotions can market. With Khan, there’s not much you can do, because he’s lost 2 out of his last 4 fights and he’s been inactive for nearly a year. Khan could have helped himself in a big way to land the Mayweather if he had stayed busy with his career and beaten Devon Alexander last December to capture his IBF welterweight title. But Khan decided to play it safe by sitting on the sidelines hoping he’d get the Mayweather fight anyway. Khan’s inactivity may turn around and bite him in the backside with him getting passed over by Mayweather.

It’s still possible that Khan’s fans will flood the voting poll at Mayweatherpromotions.com and vote him into the fight, but as of now it’s not looking good for Khan.

Jeff thinks Mayweather should focus on fighting guys who have titles, and who are well respected by fans. Sadly, he doesn’t see Khan as deserving of the fight because he brings nothing to the fight other than what he accomplished in the past. But those accomplishments have been washed away with Khan’s defeats to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia, and his near defeat at the hands of Julio Diaz.



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