Khan: If Floyd fights me, he’ll get the biggest purse of his career

By Boxing News - 05/16/2014 - Comments

khan67000By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan (29-3, 19 KO’s) thinks he’ll be able to draw massive amounts of people to a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. (46-0, 26 KO’s) if he moves off his September date to fight him in November or December this year in a pay-per-view. Believe it or not, Khan thinks that Mayweather will get career high purse for the fight if he chooses him.

Khan isn’t a huge attraction in the United States like past Mayweather opponents Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Miguel Cotto, so the only way that Mayweather could wind up with the biggest purse of his career is if the PPV money from the UK was huge enough to give Mayweather extra money on top of what he’ll be getting from the U.S PPV.

“I really think that if Floyd wants to get the biggest purse of his career, a fight between him and me will make him a lot of money,” Khan said to Boxnation. “I spoke to his manager Leonard Ellerbe and he said that he’s very keen on getting the fight on in the future. I think he’s [Mayweather] picked Bolton [to visit], so I think we’ll sit down for a chat. I’ll say ‘Let me get the gloves on and we’ll get in the ring.'”

Would a Khan-Mayweather fight bring in over 2 million PPV buys in the U.S? Nah, I don’t see it happening. Indeed, I think it would be a fight that would struggle to hit 1 million buys unless Mayweather were to stack the undercard with guys like Danny Garcia, Lucas Matthysse, Adrien Broner, Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter. Khan still isn’t known by casual boxing fans in America, and his recent fight against Luis Collazo wasn’t a crowd pleasing fight due to Khan’s constant holding, head locks, bending Collazo over, shoving and running. I mean, Khan’s fights in the past, before he changed his fighting style, was an exciting one. But the way Khan is fighting now is just really hard on the eyes, and it makes you wonder how long he’ll be able to fight like that before he starts losing fights due to disqualification or multiple point deductions due to the excessive holding.

“Who knows? He [Mayweather] might change the date to November or December next year,” Khan said. “I can do May this time next year. We’ll just see what he’s going to say. they might not be interested in fighting me, because I really believe I have the style to causes Floyd Mayweather a lot of problems.”

No way will Mayweather change his fight date on September 13th, which is the Mexican Independence Day weekend, to fight a guy who isn’t a star in the U.S. in order to fight Khan in November or December. That would be a self-defeating move on Mayweather’s part if he were to move his fight date. The loss of PPV buys from a move like that would be huge for Mayweather, and Khan doesn’t have the drawing power to make up for those lost PPV buys. As soon as Mayweather would move off the September 13th date, you can bet that a star like Canelo might choose to move to that date in order to take advantage of the holiday.

“Everywhere I go in America, people are talking about a fight between me and Floyd Mayweather,” Khan said. “People want to see that fight. All of Britain wants to see that fight. Floyd knows it’s a very popular fight between me and him. I really believe he’s thinking about it, because he really knows I will give him a lot of problems.”

I haven’t heard Americans saying they want Mayweather to fight Khan. The fighters that the Americans want to see Mayweather fight are Manny Pacquiao, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Sergio Martinez, Miguel Cotto and Keith Thurman. I hear very few people mentioning Khan as an opponent they’d like to see Mayweather fight. That could definitely change if Khan were to start fighting bigger names like Thurman and Porter, but as of now, he’s not being mentioned. The problem that Khan has is that he’s not fought good opponents since his losses to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia. Since those defeats, Khan has beaten Carlos Molina, Julio Diaz and Luis Collazo. The wins over Diaz and Collazo were against older fighters that aren’t the top guys.



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