Khan: The Mayweather Super fight is within touching distance

By Boxing News - 07/31/2014 - Comments

khan54By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan (29-3, 19 KOs) believes that he’s nearer to getting the big fight that he’s been talking about for ages against WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. Khan thinks the Mayweather fight could take place next May if he looks good in his upcoming bout on December 6th this year.

Khan is waiting for his adviser Al Haymon and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions to pick out the opponent for that date. As usual, Khan is mentioning Robert Guerrero and Devon Alexander as two of the top names that are being looked at for his December 6th fight

Guerrero is the slower and arguably weaker puncher, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s the one that gets picked out for Khan to fight. Alexander has more hand speed and pop in his punches, and he could potentially beat Khan if he connected with enough of his shots.

“The Mayweather fight is within touching distance. It’s very close,” Khan said to Skysports.com. “I don’t want a long wait until May. I want to get a fight in December and look good in that fight. I want to fight nice and comfortable and then go into a super-fight in May. That’s what my idea is and I’ve left it to my team and management to take me to that route.”

I wish Khan a lot of luck in trying to get the Mayweather fight, because it doesn’t look like something that has any chance of happening. I mean, Khan could definitely help himself get to that fight, but it’ll take a couple of risks on his part to make it happen.

The first thing that Khan needs to do is tell Haymon and Golden Boy that he wants Keith Thurman or the winner of the Shawn Porter vs. Kell Brook for his December 6th fight. Those guys hold a lot more weight right now than the likes of Alexander and Guerrero. Alexander is still rebuilding after a loss to Porter, so it’s not as if Khan is going to get a huge bump up in status if he beats him.

As for Guerrero, he’s pretty much in the same boat as Alexander, but he’s arguably worse off because he was easily beaten by Mayweather last year in May in a one-sided 12 round decision loss. And in Guerrero’s first fight since that loss, he looked horrible in beating fringe contender Yoshihiro Kamegai by a 12 round decision last June.

If Khan wants to get the status that he’s going to need to get a Mayweather fight, he’ll need to fight the winner of Brook-Porter or face Keith Thurman. The question is will Golden Boy and Haymon match Khan against one of those fighters? I’d say that’s a big no. He’s going to likely be put in with the safer option of fighting Alexander or Guerrero. As such, Khan won’t get much from a victory over one of those guys if he can actually beat them, and believe me, I have serious doubts whether he can do that.

The other thing that Khan needs to do in order to get a Mayweather fight is he needs to stop holding, shoving and pulling down on his opponent’s heads when he fights. Khan needs to prove that he can win his next fight in December without resorting to those fouling tactics to win. Mayweather is likely not too excited about facing someone that fouls constantly by grabbing his opponent’s heads and then bending them over in an ‘r’ shape with their heads facing the canvas while Khan leans on the back of their necks with all of his weight.

Mayweather probably doesn’t want to be put in headlocks all night long either the way Khan does with his opponents. The roughhouse tactics that Marcos Maidana does in the ring is kid stuff compared to the things that Khan does, because he basically shuts down his opponent’s offense with these fouling tactics, and the referees that have worked his recent fights have let him get away with it. The last referee that attempted to put a stop to Khan’s roughhouse tactics was Joseph Cooper when he took two points off from Khan for his shoving in the Lamont Peterson fight.

I’m not really sure that Khan can win his fights without these roughhouse tactics though. If you take away Khan’s shoving, head-locks, and pulling down on the head of his opponents, it would mean that he’d be forced to take a lot more shots from his opponents because they wouldn’t have their offense stamped out routinely by these tactics.



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