By Scott Gilfoid: Having been pretty much ignored by WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. in his attempts to get a fight against him, Britain’s Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) has turned his attention to trying to scrape up a big payday fight against WBO welterweight champ Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) for later this year or sometime next.
Khan wants to fight Pacquiao because he thinks he can beat him, and he sees the fight helping establish him as the next start in boxing. Khan has been around for a long time in fighting as a pro for the past 10 years, but he’s been unable to become a superstar in the sport like other more fortunate fighters like Pacquiao, Mayweather, Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez have.
It must have been painful for the 28-year-old to watch the 24-year-old Canelo, who is four years younger than him, quickly become a pay-per-view star in the United States. Khan has yet to achieve that status as of yet.
“I want this fight. I would love to box Manny,” Khan said via the Dailymail.co.uk. “We’ve been looking at an event in Dubai and Abu Dhabi is only a short drive away. It’s a dream of mine to fight in that part of the world.”
Well, I’m not so certain that Pacquiao is going to be looking to fight Khan later on this year after he gets through with the Mayweather fight on May 2nd. Let’s pretend that Pacquiao does agree to fight Khan in 2015. I sure as heck don’t see Pacquiao’s aged promoter Bob Arum agreeing to stage a fight between Pacquiao and Khan in Dubai.
I don’t see it happening. If anything, Arum will either stage the fight in Macau, China or the U.S. Arum’s company Top Rank are trying to open up China for pay-per-view fights. The way to do that is to keep staging Pacquiao’s fights in Macau until he becomes a huge attraction. At that point Arum can start selling the fights on pay-per-view in China and possibly make a huge bundle given the tremendous population.
Khan has a fight next month against Pacquiao victim Chris Algieri (20-1, 8 KOs) on May 29th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Khan can’t afford a letdown and get beaten again if he wants to keep alive his hopes of getting Mayweather or Pacquiao to agree to fight him.
Khan could already be in position for a fight against one of those two superstars if he hadn’t backed off from facing quality opposition following his loss to Danny Garcia in 2012. If Khan had continued to face good pponents by then he would have probably gotten a fight against Mayweather or Pacquiao by now.
To be sure, it would have likely required that Khan fight guys like Adrien Broner, Marcos Maidana, Keith Thurman and Kell Brook. If Khan could have beaten those fighters, he would be in a great position to fight Pacquiao and Mayweather right now. Unfortunately, instead of fighting those guys, Khan has fought this group: Little 5’5” Carlos Molina, Julio Diaz, Luis Collazo and Devon Alexander. That’s a pretty soft group of fighters if you ask me.
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