Hatton: Mayweather might be forced to fight Khan

By Boxing News - 04/15/2015 - Comments

hatton939By Scott Gilfoid: Former two division world champion, now turned promoter, Ricky Hatton believes that WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr may wind up being forced to fight Britain’s Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) because Hatton feels that Khan is becoming such a big name in the sport.

Hatton sees the 28-year-old Khan as having beaten a lot of the top fighters, and for that reason Mayweather will have a lot of pressure to fight Khan.

Khan is said to be fighting 31-year-old former WBO light welterweight champion Chris Algieri on May 29th. The news about that fight has not excited the boxing public, as they want to see Khan take a real test against the likes of Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman, Marcos Maidana, Kell Brook, Lucas Matthysse, Brandon Rios, Lamont Peterson, Ruslan Provodnikov or Tim Bradley. Unfortunately, those guys aren’t in the cards for Khan, as he seems to be taking a softer path in hopes of putting together a number of victories to try and get a big money fight against Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao.

“Amir’s as big a name as is out there,” Hatton said via BBC Sport. “He’s beaten pretty much everyone, and Mayweather might be forced to fight him. Amir is boxing with a lot more discipline lately. He’s in and out and he’s not getting involved. I think that style will cause Floyd massive problems. I think Floyd would run a mile.”

I can’t believe that Hatton thinks that Mayweather would run from Khan if they were to face each other. If Mayweather wasn’t running against talents like Marcos Maidana and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, both of whom he beat, then I can’t see Mayweather choosing to run from the lighter hitting Khan.

At this point I doubt that Mayweather will even bother ever facing Khan in the ring, because Mayweather is talking about only wanting to fight one more time before retiring from boxing. Why would Mayweather want to exhaust his last remaining fight against Khan, a fighter that doesn’t have a huge fan base in the United States? That would be a backwards move for Mayweather. It would be the equivalent of Mayweather turning around and fighting Robert “The Ghost’ Guerrero and/or Marcos Maidana again. I doubt that Mayweather will want to take a tremendous pay cut from the cash he’s going to get in the Pacquiao fight to turn around and face Khan.

Now if Khan hadn’t been exposed in his losses to Breidis Prescott, Lamont Peterson, and Danny Garcia, and if he didn’t have a controversial win over Julio Diaz, then I could understand Mayweather possibly facing him just for the heck of it to be the first guy to give Khan a defeat. But that’s obviously not the case here, because Khan has been whipped four times in his career with three defeats and a controversial win in London against Diaz.

With a marred resume like Khan’s, Mayweather has no real reason to want to fight him. I’m sure that Khan will one of these days rebuild his career enough to where boxing fans won’t remember all of his failures in the ring, but I think Mayweather will be long gone from the sport by the time that happens.

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With the weak opposition that Khan has been fighting for the past couple of years since his losses to Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson, Khan is struggling to rebuild his name. If he had been fighting the top tier opposition, it would be a lot easier and he would have likely been all the way back by now. But that’s not what he’s doing. Instead of fighting the likes of Thurman, Brook, Matthysse, Maidana, Bradley, Peterson, Garcia, Rios, Provodnikov, Terence Crawford, and Porter, we’re seeing Khan fight little Carlos Molina, Diaz, Luis Collazo and Devon Alexander.

With the exception of Diaz, those guys aren’t big punchers. Khan won’t be able to bring himself back to the top fighting weaker fighters over and over again while opening his yap 24/7 about wanting to fight Mayweather.

For Khan to get a fight against Mayweather before he retires from boxing, Khan needs a monstrous win that shakes up the boxing world. The only guys that are big enough names for Khan to get the attention of the sports world and possibly Mayweather are the likes of Thurman, Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin. Those three. None of the other top welterweights or top junior middleweights have a big enough name.

If Khan could immediately bag one of those fighters and look good in beating them, then I can see Mayweather agreeing to fight Khan before he retires from the sport. But there’s probably no way in the world that Khan would agree to fight Thurman, Cotto, Canelo or Golovkin. I could see Khan losing to all of them by a knockout.

I’d like to see Khan in with Golovkin because that would be a fight that would open doors for Khan if he were to win, but I don’t think his adviser Al Haymon would give the green light on a fight like that, even if Khan was ambitious and brave enough to take the fight. I mean, I do think Khan would give Golovkin a lot of problems with his speed and movement. But I don’t know how well Khan would be able to handle Golovkin’s punching power once he cut off the ring on Khan and started nailing him with shots to the head and body.

Khan likes to clinch and shove his opponents when they get close enough to hit him, but Golovkin is good at avoiding clinches by backing up to keep from getting grabbed. I think Khan would be forced to run the entire 12 rounds against Golovkin in order to survive to the final bell. But if Khan is looking for one big win that would open the doors for a Mayweather fight before he retires, it would be a win over Golovkin. Other than that, Khan is pretty much wasting his time by facing weak opposition for payday money.



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