Khan: Mayweather or Pacquiao will fight me this year

By Boxing News - 01/10/2015 - Comments

khan927By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) is confident that he’ll be fighting either Floyd Mayweather Jr or Manny Pacquiao in 2015 despite the lack of interest from either of them. Khan believes that one of these big names will finally agree to fight him.

Goodness knows, Khan has been hounding Mayweather for ages now nonstop without any success. You would think that Khan’s hard work would have paid off at some point. But now Khan is putting his energies on trying to get a fight against Pacquiao. Khan says he’s willing to fight Pacquiao in Macau, China if that’s what it takes to get the fight.

I’m not sure if that’s going to help the 28-year-old Khan get the fight any sooner, but I’m sure it will please Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum to hear Khan saying he’ll fight in China in order to get the fight.

“Mayweather will fight me or Pacquiao (this year). He knows the fight between me and him will make a lot of money,” Khan said via the Telegraph.co.uk. “Who else is there for him? Unless he does rematches, there’s nobody else. If Floyd Mayweather doesn’t want to fight me this year, Pacquiao and I could fight – we could get it on in the USA, in the UK, in Dubai, or even Macau, where he fights once a year.”

I know this sounds like Khan is getting really desperate. He’s basically bending over backwards here in letting Pacquiao call the shots in venue when they haven’t even started the negotiations. When you see a fighter already saying he’ll give this or that up to get a fight, it suggests that fighter is completely desperate to get the fight.

Heck, even if Khan got the fight, I don’t know that he’d come out ahead because I can’t see him getting the purse split that he’d want for the fight. He’s so eager to get the fight, I think Khan would wind up getting a smaller purse split than Pacquiao’s last opponent Chris Algieri. It might not even be worth it for Khan even if Top Rank were jumping at the chance to match Khan against Pacquiao, which they’re currently not.

Khan’s problem is he’s still managed by Al Haymon while still under the Golden Boy Promotions umbrella. I don’t see Haymon green lighting a Pacquiao fight. Khan has Haymon as his manager, but he probably has no chance of getting the Pacquiao fight.

You can kind of guess why Mayweather’s not interested in fighting Khan. Besides the way Khan has seen as so desperate for the fight, which has got to be a real turnoff for Mayweather, Khan’s new style of fighting under trainer Virgil Hunter has got to be the biggest negative of all. Khan basically does a lot of punching, holding and running. He likes to punch and then immediately grab his opponents in a clinch to keep them from getting their shots off.

When he’s not going that, then he’s moving backwards or side to side to keep from getting hit. I don’t know too many fighters who want to fight a runner or a holder, because it turns the fight into a negative situation where one guy has to either chase or try and pull his opponent off of him by peeling him from him.

Khan isn’t going to endear himself to Mayweather with the way he’s fighting now because it’s so painful to look at. I mean, it doesn’t resemble boxing at all, and that’s just not appealing for a superstar heading towards 40-years-old like Mayweather.

It’s like asking Khan if he’d like to fight a runner/grabber when he turns 38 himself. Somehow I don’t see Khan being eager to fight a guy like that when he reaches that age, not if he’s filthy rich by that point in his life the way Mayweather is now.



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