By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) says he’d like to fight in April against the best possible opponent available, but with him sitting and waiting to see whether a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr, Manny Pacquiao or Miguel Cotto will happen, he’s ruining his chances of getting back into the ring in April.
Further, it doesn’t look like Khan will be able to fight in May either, because he’s going to have a huge problem trying to find an open date for him to fight. If Mayweather faces Pacquiao on May 2nd, and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez faces James Kirkland on May 9th, it’s not going to leave much of anything for Khan in this month.
It would be in Khan’s best interest to up the level of opposition he’s been facing so that he can actually make a case for himself that he deserves to fight one of the top names. I mean, beating the likes of little 5’5” Carlos Molina, Julio Diaz by a controversial decision, and the light hitting Devon Alexander and Luis Collazo, they simply aren’t big enough wins to justify Khan getting a shot against the stars.
Khan needs to start fighting quality for a change by getting in the ring with Keith Thurman, Marcos Maidana, Lucas Maidana, Ruslan Provodnikov and Shawn Porter. I’d also like to see Khan fight Kell Brook so that he can get that fight over with. The way that Khan is seemingly avoiding that fight reminds me a lot of how Ricky Hatton failed to fight Junior Witter many years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh-Pd1OpjQs
It was such an obvious that needed to be made, but instead of taking that fight, Hatton fought guys like Collazo, a past his best Jose Luis Collazo and Paulie Malignaggi.
Khan had set a deadline in January for Mayweather to agree to fight him. Khan said that he would schedule a fight against someone if Mayweather didn’t say yes to a fight with him by January 15th. Well, the deadline has come and done, and Khan still doesn’t have an opponent scheduled for his next fight.
This tells me that Khan is about to go down the same road as he did in 2013 when he stayed out of the ring over an entire year while waiting on a fight with Mayweather. Khan didn’t fight from April 2013 to May of 2014. He basically chewed up a year of his career waiting on the Mayweather fight that never took place.
Khan is now in the waiting game again, and who knows how long he’ll wait around for the Mayweather, Pacquiao or Cotto fights. The fact that he hasn’t scheduled anything now tells me that Khan will likely burn up six months of his career waiting.
By the time he does find out that Mayweather is fighting Pacquiao or some other opponent, Khan will still need 3-4 months to get his own opponent unless his adviser Al Haymon digs up a soft touch that takes the fight at the last second. If they’re not looking for quality, then I can see Khan fighting on a month’s notice, but if it’s going to be a life body with a chance of knocking Khan out, then it’s probably going to take three to four months before the fight gets made.
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