By Scott Gilfoid: Earlier on Thursday, Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) broke the news that he’ll be fighting Chris Algieri (20-1, 8 KOs) on May 30th in New York. If Khan thought that boxing fans would be interested in seeing him fight the light hitting Algieri, he proved to be dead wrong, because the overwhelming opinion from fans has been negative.
According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, Khan had the chance to fight former two division world champion Tim Bradley next rather than Algieri. Instead of taking the fight with Bradley, Khan turned it down for some reason.
It doesn’t really make a lot of sense for Khan to have turned down the Bradley fight because it’s easily the bigger fight than Khan-Algieri. Bradley is arguably a lot better known among casual boxing fans in the U.S than Algieri. It’s pretty obvious why Khan turned down the Bradley fight.
If Khan had beaten Bradley, he’d be the IBF mandatory for IBF champion Kell Brook. Khan doesn’t need to fight an eliminator to fight Brook, because he and his promoter Eddie Hearn are throwing the title fight at him. Khan can get the fight against Brook no matter what he does.
Heck, even if Khan were to be knocked out in his next fight against the light hitting Algieri, I still see Hearn and Brook wanting to take on Khan. Somehow I get the impression that they feel that the Khan fight will validate them if they win. It obviously won’t. Beating Khan won’t mean anything, because he’s already been exposed three times in his career. Now if Brook were to face Keith Thurman or Marcos Maidana and beat them, then that would be a big deal.
“IBF ordered 147 eliminator between Tim Bradley Jr. & and Amir King Khan. IBF said Khan turned it down. So next up to face Bradley is Frankie Gavin.”
First off, I don’t see Gavin’s promoter Eddie Hearn bothering to match Gavin against Bradley in the IBF 147 pound eliminator, because Hearn doesn’t need to make the Bradley vs. Gavin fight in order to get Gavin a world title shot against IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook.
We’ll probably see Brook face Gavin in his next fight on May 30th. Gavin won’t even have to fight in an eliminator to get that fight, because Hearn will surely make the fight anyway despite the fact that Gavin hasn’t beaten anyone good during his career, and he recently was defeated by Leonard Bundu. Brook vs. Gavin will play big over in the UK, but I’m not sure how well it’ll play in the United States. If Showtime wasn’t interested in televising the Khan vs. Algieri mismatch, then I don’t see how they would want to televise an arguably worse mismatch between Brook and Gavin. If Hearn wants to make a big name out of Brook, he’ll match him against a quality opponent with a name that boxing fans recognize worldwide, and I’m not talking about 42-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez. Hearn needs to match Brook against Keith Thurman so that fans can see if Brook is for real or not.
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