Khan: If I beat Pacquiao, Mayweather might fight me

By Boxing News - 09/28/2015 - Comments

khan666By Scott Gilfoid: Believe it or not, Amir Khan sees Manny Pacquiao as a stepping stone fight to get him his prize Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2016. Khan thinks that if he beats Pacquiao, Mayweather could come out of his short term retirement to face him next year.

Khan thinks that Mayweather will definitely come back in 2016 in seeking his 50th victory of his career. Khan sees that as definitely happening, whether it’s against him or somebody else.

The only question is will Mayweather fight Khan or some other opponent. Khan believes that it’ll be him if he whips Pacquiao in February if next year.

Khan isn’t sure if he’ll be getting the Pacquiao fight. He says he’ll find out in a week or two whether the fight will happen. If not, then he plans on fighting in December against an opponent still to be determined. Khan has some candidates that he and adviser Al Haymon and family will select from for the December fight.

“I want to fight Manny Pacquiao next because if I beat him, maybe that will make Floyd Mayweather come out of retirement to fight me. The public demand would be huge,” Khan said to skysports.com. “I’m looking at fighting in December but if not then it will be as late as February. We’re looking at a few different opponents and hopefully we’ll find out exactly in the next week or so.”

I don’t think there would be a huge amount of interest in a Mayweather-Khan fight even if Khan beats Pacquiao. The problem with Khan’s idea is that Pacquiao already lost to Mayweather last May, so anything happens now really won’t matter. Pacquiao looked like an old man in losing that fight, and he didn’t exactly fight in his usual all-out and brave manner for the full 12 rounds.

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If Khan beats Pacquiao, boxing fans will merely think that Pacquiao is an over-the-hill 36-year-old fighter, and they might not be wrong. If Mayweather came back and fought Khan after him beating Pacquiao, Mayweather would likely make far, far less money in that fight than he’d make in rematches against Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or even Gennady Golovkin.

I think Mayweather will be more concerned with the amount of cash that he can make next year rather than him trying to beat someone that only the hardcore boxing fans know about in Khan. Money wise. It doesn’t make sense for Mayweather to fight Khan in 2016, when he can make better cash fighting the likes of Pacquiao, Cotto, Canelo or Golovkin.

As long as Mayweather is willing to take a risk in who he chooses next year, he can make really good money. I mean, I wouldn’t waste my time fighting Khan because I would be losing a ton of money in fighting him rather than Cotto, Canelo, Golovkin or Pacquiao.

Mayweather already lost a huge wad of cash by choosing Andre Berto for his last fight instead of one of those fighters mentioned above. I can’t see Mayweather throwing even more money away by fighting an unknown like Khan in the U.S. Yeah, the hardcore fans I the U.S know who Khan is, but the casual fans don’t know the guy and it would be just like Mayweather fighting Berto again.

Like I’ve said many times before, Khan blew it by fighting the lesser welterweights in the last three years instead of the top caliber guys in the U.S. If Khan had been focusing on fighting the likes of Marcos Maidana, Shawn Porter, Adrien Broner, Keith Thurman and Errol Spence all this time, he’d be a huge star in the U.S and Mayweather would have a reason to fight him. But then again, maybe Khan would lose to all those fighters, and Mayweather would still have no reason to fight him.

“I think he thinks I’m too dangerous for him. I don’t think he’ll ever want to fight me. I bring too much to the table and would cause him a lot of problems,” Khan said about Mayweather.

I don’t think Mayweather thinks Khan is too dangerous. I think he doesn’t seem as someone that brings in money in terms of PPV buys. He doesn’t sell a lot of tickets in the U.S, and that’s a bad sign when it comes to predicting his marketability in a PPV fight against Mayweather.



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