Mayweather putting his next bout up for a vote leaves Khan looking bad

By Boxing News - 02/03/2014 - Comments

khan43By Chris Williams: Amir Khan should have thought carefully before choosing sit out his fight with former IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander last December. Khan chose to not take that fight because he didn’t want to risk losing and messing up a career high payday against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 3rd. But with Mayweather now putting his next bout up for vote in asking fans to select between Khan and Marcos Maidana, it potentially leaves Khan with nothing to show for sitting idle for 10 months. Khan last fought in April of last year in squeaking by with a 12 round decision over Julio Diaz.

If the best that Golden Boy Promotions can do for Khan is put him in with one of their fighters like Alexander, Lucas Matthysse or Lamont Peterson for his next fight, then it’s going to be a really bad deal for Khan to have sat and waited all that time for Mayweather.

Khan can learn from this. In the future he needs to stay busy regardless of whether there’s a big fight over the horizon. Khan needs to stay active, and assume that he won’t be getting any fight, because he doesn’t have the cache any longer to assume that the top fighters will gladly fight him. Khan needs to keep achieving, because his defeats to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia really did a number on his career.

It’s still possible that Mayweather could select Khan for his next fight on May 3rd, but the fact that he’s putting it up for a vote with the boxing public isn’t what you’d call a compliment to Khan. He needs to take that as a message that Mayaweather sees him as flawed fighter that the fans aren’t all that eager to see him fighting.

Even if the boxing public selects Khan, it still can’t be a great feeling the way that he would be getting the fight. However, Khan probably never saw himself in this position when it came time for Mayweather to consider giving him a fight. Khan probably assumed that he’d be at the high point in his career when Mayweather finally agreed to fight him instead of at one of the lowest points. Khan has one his last two fights, but he looked so bad in each of those fights that they might as well have been considered losses for him.

Virgil Hunter, Khan’s trainer, has been doing a lot of the talking for Khan lately in telling people that he feels that Khan has the speed and talent to give Mayweather problems. But no one seems to be listening, and the fans aren’t going to just blindly follow what Hunter says when making their decision about who Mayweather should fight next.



Comments are closed.