Khan says he wants Cotto and Thurman

By Boxing News - 06/02/2015 - Comments

khan5555By Scott Gilfoid: While Amir Khan’s attention is currently on a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. for this September, Khan is now saying that he’s interested in facing WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto and WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman.

Earlier today, Khan surprised a lot of boxing fans by revealing that he’s close to confirming a September fight against Mayweather. But by Khan saying that he’s interested in fighting Cotto and Thurman, it looks like a transparent attempt by Khan to get a better deal with Mayweather.

If Mayweather thinks that Khan has other options against the likes of Cotto or Thurman, then he might be willing to give Khan a better split of the purse. I don’t think this ploy is going to payoff for Khan because Mayweather likely will see through it, and not believe for a second that Khan is seriously interested in facing Cotto or Thurman.

“The welterweight division is one of the hottest in world boxing at the moment and there are any number of other possibilities, including Miguel Cotto and Keith Thurman,” said Khan to Skysports.com.

I hate to break this to Khan, but Cotto isn’t a welterweight. If he truly wants that fight, then Khan will need to wait for the smoke to clear from Cotto’s fights against Daniel Geale and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez before he can get a possible shot against Cotto. Even then, I don’t see it happening. If Cotto beats Geale and Canelo, he’ll either fight an immediate rematch against Canelo or face Gennady Golovkin in what could be the final fight of Cotto’s career.

I don’t see Cotto wasting a valuable fight facing Khan because it would be a no-win situation for Cotto. If he beats Khan, which is highly likely, Cotto won’t get any credit because Khan is a pumped up welterweight.

Khan should arguably be still fighting at 140. He clearly doesn’t match up against the best welterweights like Thurman, Manny Pacquiao, Marcos Maidana, Mayweather and Kell Brook. Khan doesn’t have the size and the power to compete against the best at 147. I could see some other welterweights beating him as well like Diego Chaves, and Brandon Rios. I would favor Chris Algieri to beat Khan in a rematch.

Thurman would take a fight against Khan in a second if it were offered to him, but who is Khan kidding? He’s not going to fight a devastating puncher like Keith Thurman. If Khan can’t even fight someone like Brook, who isn’t the puncher that Thurman is, he’s not going to step up to the plate and face “One Time.”

Like I said, I believe Khan is just trying hard to get a better cut of the financial pie in his fight against Mayweaher. If Khan can somehow make Mayweather and his management think that he has other options like Thurman or Cotto, then they might give him a decent cut. If not, then Khan probably won’t get a better split of the purse than 80-20, or 85-15.



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