By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan has finally gotten the bad news that Floyd Mayweather Jr. is looking in another direction for his September 12th fight by saying he’ll be choosing either Karim Mayfield or Andre Berto. Khan is finally coming to terms with the reality that Mayweather isn’t going to fight him ever, and he’s taking it pretty hard judging by some of the comments he’s making.
Khan says he’s going to take to Al Haymon, his adviser, to see what he can do for him in terms of lining him up for a big fight. Mayweather wants an entertaining fighter, and Mayfield or Berto are very good at bringing excitement. Mayweather obviously wants someone who will bring the heat to him, rather than a fighter that will run around the ring fighting on his back foot all night long like he’d probably get with Khan.
Mayweather is looking out for the boxing public by wanting an exciting opponent rather than someone who is trying to keep from getting hit all night.
Khan thinks he would give Mayweather more problems than Manny Pacquiao did last May. Khan didn’t look so good against Pacquiao victim Chris Algieri last month, and you have to wonder what happened with Khan. I mean, if Khan couldn’t even conclusively beat a guy like Algieri, then why should Mayweather bother fighting the British fighter? I think Khan might need to go back to the drawing board and look to fight Algieri again to prove that his awful performance was just a fluke thing of him not taking the fight seriously, which is what Khan hinted at.
“I’m gonna speak to Al [Haymon] again. I want the fight because I want to give the boxing fans around the world the fight they want, an exciting fight,” Khan said to Fighthype.com.” I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll do more than what [Manny] Pacquiao did in the fight, or any other fighter who’s faced Mayweather, because at the end of the day, when I come to fight, regardless of who it’s against, I give it 100%.”
Haymon can definitely get Khan a big fight, but I just don’t think he can guarantee him a Mayweather fight. Khan only has himself to blame for not getting the Mayweather fight after all these years. There was a fork in the road that Khan took back in 2012 after his loss to Danny Garcia. Khan could have gone one way in following the path to a Mayweather fight by taking on Marcos Maidana in a rematch, Keith Thurman, Kell Brook, Shawn Porter, Lamont Peterson rematch, Breidis Prescott rematch, Errol Spence, Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia rematch, and Lucas Matthysse. Beating some or all of those guys would no doubt have given Khan the Mayweather fight that he so badly craves. But instead, Khan took the fork in the road to the easier fights against little 5’5” former lightweight Carlos Molina, Julio Diaz, Luis Collazo, Chris Algieri and Devon Alexander.
All those fighters had one thing in common in that they weren’t big punchers. As such, Khan won all the fights, but he got very little credit because these were little more than just five tune-up fights against opposition that aren’t highly thought of by the boxing public. You get what you put into your boxing career. If you take the easy fights, as Khan has, then you get a padded record but you don’t grow in popularity. Khan’s career has been stultified since 2012, and he only has himself to blame for taking these easy matches. If Khan were brave and had his head screwed on straight, he would have realized that he needed to take a different fork in the road to take on the harder opposition and risk failure against them.
The chances are Khan would have been wiped out over and over again, but if he had beaten all of them, then he would have a great chance of fighting Mayweather right now. The fact is Khan didn’t fight them, and no one cares about his empty wins over Algieri, Diaz, Molina, Collazo and Alexander. The wins weren’t big enough to give Khan any push in popularity.
So now Khan is stuck having to make that decision again at a fork in the road. He can stay with the easy path and wind up nowhere, or he can face the tough opposition and risk failure. But at least if he beats them, he’ll become popular. It’s obviously will be too late for Khan to get the Mayweather fight, but at least he’ll be able to show where he stands in the welterweight division.
“I don’t think you’ll ever see Amir Khan in a boring fight, and that’s what Mayweather is scared of, because he knows I have an engine in me and I will keep coming,” Khan said. “He’s [Mayweather] going to be finishing on a low after the Manny Pacquiao fight. No disrespect to the guy he’s fighting next. Does he want to want to be remembered as a great champion or does he just want to be remembered as a guy who was unbeaten.”
Khan might as well be talking to himself because he’s the one who has been running his career on a low for the past three years. Khan reminds me of someone who had a bad experience in a swimming pool, and now he’s afraid to go near the water again. He got whipped by Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson in 2011 and 2012, and since then, Khan has been facing easy opposition that are no threat to knocking hi out.
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