By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan’s former trainer Freddie Roach wasn’t too impressed with Khan’s close 12 round unanimous decision win over Chris Algieri last month on May 29th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Roach didn’t go into specifics other than to cast doubt about the 28-year-old Khan’s chances of getting a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on September 12th in Las Vegas, Nevada. As bad as Khan looked against Algieri, and believe me Khan was plenty bad, Roach doesn’t see him getting the fight against Mayweather.
“He’ll [Khan] never get Mayweather off that performance,” Roach said via Newsday.com. “He was terrible. It was boring.”
I hate to be the one to agree with Roach, but I’m totally with him on this. I don’t think Khan fought nearly well enough to deserve a fight against a talent like Mayweather. Heck, Khan didn’t fight well enough to get a fight against someone like Marcos Maidana. I mean, looked beyond horrible against Algieri, and if anything, he should be looking to get a do over against the 31-year-old New Yorker rather than flapping his gums about wanting a fight against Mayweather.
That’s like flunking a course and then expecting to tackle and even tougher one. Khan needs to repeat the coursework in facing Algieri again and show that he can at least get a C-grade out of the fight because with the way Khan fought Algieri, I think Khan deserved an incomplete or at the minimum a D-grade.
Mayweather can pick whoever he wants for his next fight in September, but I think he’ll be making a big mistake if he chooses to fight Khan next. I’ve never seen Mayweather in the past pick out guys that were coming off of poor performances before, and I’d hate to see him start right now at this point in his career.
Mayweather needs to maximize his earnings with each fight, and that means fighting the best guy that can bring in the green. If someone with a name like Miguel Cotto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez isn’t available for September, then Mayweather should skip that date and wait until 2016 to finish out his contract with Showtime PPV.
As for Khan, I think he should try and get a rematch against Algieri so that he can prove that he’s the better man. If Algieri doesn’t want to fight him again, then Khan needs to look to face guys like Keith Thurman, Lucas Matthysse, Lamont Peterson, Adrien Broner, Shawn Porter or Kell Brook. Those are the fighters that Khan needs to be fighting at this point in his career, and he needs to prove that he’s better than them by fighting them however many times it takes or him to get a clear win. In the case of Algieri, Khan failed to prove that he’s the better man, which is why Roach thinks Khan didn’t do enough to deserve the Mayweather fight.
If Mayweather fights Khan next, then I doubt their fight will bring in more than 800,000 PPV buys. That’s something that Dan Rafael of ESPN agrees with me on. He doesn’t see Mayweather vs. Khan as being a fight that will sell a lot of buys on PPV.
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