By Scott Gilfoid: If the negotiations between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) go belly up this month, Roger Mayweather, the trainer for Floyd Jr., thinks that Pacquiao will taste defeat if he chooses former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) as his backup option for May 30th.
Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum have talked about wanting to use Khan as their plan-B opponent, as they see him as a viable opponent due to him being well-known and someone who might make it an interesting fight. Khan is clearly interested in facing Mayweather or Pacquiao, whichever shows him any interest.
Khan wants a big money fight so badly that he’s even gotten to the point where he’s talking about wanting to fight WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto next.
“Amir Khan going to win [against Pacquiao]. Yeah, he over Pacquiao,” Roger said via Hustleboss.com. “His [Khan] style, height, reach Pacquiao going to get knocked out. Remember I told you; Pacquiao is going to get knocked out. He ain’t going to beat Amir Khan.”
That’s obviously a great match-up for Pacquiao if he can get Khan, because it’s already been established that Khan has a chin problem. All Pacquiao would have to do is catch Khan with a hard shot to the chin and he’d likely have him on the canvas. Khan is one of those types who gets up from his knockdowns, but he’s not the type that recovers from being knocked down.
This means that it’s going to make it easy for Pacquiao to finish him off with a flurry of punches to the head. Khan would likely be holding constantly to try and survive the round, but Pacquiao would have no problems getting one of his arms free to put Khan out of his misery for an easy knockout.
Pacquiao knows from his many sparring sessions with Khan that the best way to beat him is to put heavy pressure on him and look to land head shots.
The only trouble that Pacquiao and Top Rank might have in choosing Khan as an opponent for his next fight in May is justifying it as a pay-per-view fight to the boxing public. I mean, Khan hasn’t beaten anyone with power since his narrow win over Marcos Maidana in 2010, and even that fight was a somewhat controversial fight due to the referee constantly pulling Maidana off of Khan when he was trying to finish him off after hurting him in the 10th round.
If you throw Khan and Pacquiao together for a fight, it would have the working of a mismatch and that might not be good for the boxing fans that will be paying to see it on HBO.
Khan might not be able to take a fight against Pacquiao due to Khan reportedly still having one more fight on his Showtime contract. Khan says he no longer has a fight on his contract, but Showtime reportedly still sees him as having one more fight. If Showtime does Khan still under contract, then there’s likely no way that Khan will be able to fight Pacquiao on HBO unless Showtime is willing to let Khan walk.
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