By Scott Gilfoid: Recently, British welterweight contender Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) said he’s be willing to fight WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto at a catch-weight of 155 pounds. Khan added the 34-year-old Cotto to the long list of guys that he’s interested in facing in his next fight.
Khan’s attempts at getting Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao to agree to fight him have been met with failure, as both of them have shown no interest in using up one of their valuable fights to face a guy who doesn’t have a large fan base in the United States.
That hasn’t kept Khan from sitting around and just using up time in his career waiting for a fight that hasn’t materialized for him for obvious reasons.
Floyd Mayweather Sr thinks Khan is just looking to get a big payday in going after guys like Cotto, Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao. Floyd Sr sees Cotto knocking Khan out if that fight gets made.
“I think he’s just running at the mouth, looking for a pay day,” Mayweather Sr. said via HustleBoss.com as quoted by Thaboxingvoice. “Cotto will knock him out. I know he will. He’s very much too strong for him. He ain’t got a chance with Cotto.”
I don’t think Cotto would be interested in facing Khan, so this is kind of irrelevant. Khan is too much of a spoiler for someone like Cotto to show any real interest in facing him. Cotto is typically matched against guys that come to him and are interested in slugging like Antonio Margarito and Sergio Martinez.
Khan is kind of the opposite of those guys. He fights totally on the defense and doesn’t like to exchange with his opponents. Cotto won’t want to fight a guy like Khan, because there would likely be too much chasing involved in that fight. Cotto would have to chase Khan around the ring to get him in position to where he can land his power shots.
To be sure, it’s difficult to imagine Khan being able to hold up for 12 rounds against a guy with the kind of power that Cotto has. I mean, Khan would have to be able to take countless left hooks from Cotto in order for him to cross the finish line in a 12 round bout.
I just don’t see Khan being able to take the kinds of big shots that he’d need to take for him to win that fight. Khan would obviously pull out every trick in the book in order to try and beat Cotto. As such, we’d likely see Khan shoving Cotto, pulling down on his head and holding as much as possible.
Whatever the case, Khan is going to need to make a decision soon about his next opponent, because if he’s going to sit around and wait for the likes of Cotto, Mayweather and Pacquiao year after year, he’s going to wind up missing out on a lot of fights.
Instead of waiting around for the above mentioned fighters, Khan needs to show that he deserves to be in the same ring with them. Khan can show he deserves to fight them by taking on some quality opponents for a change and showing that he can beat them.
Thus far, Khan’s recent wins over Devon Alexander, Carlos Molina, Julio Diaz and Luis Collazo has shown that he deserves to fight contenders, but not champions in my book. Khan hasn’t fought anyone with power since his fight with Marcos Maidana in 2010, and that fight was one where Khan likely would have been knocked out if the referee working the fight hadn’t gotten in the way of Maidana after he had Khan hurt.
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