Khan: Mayweather is afraid of my speed

By Boxing News - 09/15/2015 - Comments

khan670By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan thinks that Floyd Mayweather Jr. will come out of retirement next year to come back for his 50th win of his career. But Khan doesn’t expect to be the one that Mayweather will select when he does come back to the ring.

Khan thinks that it’ll be someone else because he believes that Mayweather is afraid of losing his perfect 49-0 record, and for him to fight him, he would give it up. Khan believes that his hand speed is something that Mayweather fears, which is why he would never select him for his 50th fight in 2016.

“I think Mayweather is scared of (my) speed,” Khan said to newsday.com. “He wants to keep his unbeaten record. He doesn’t want to finish with a tough fight.”

Khan has been pestering Mayweather for years trying to get a fight but with no luck. Khan is now hoping to get a fight against Manny Pacquiao. He says he’s in talks with them for a fight in 2016. It appears that Khan might not fight again in 2016 while he waits for the fight with Pacquiao to happen.

Hopefully for Khan’s sake he has a drop dead date for the negotiations so that he doesn’t waste the rest of the year in talks with Top Rank, because he doesn’t need to use three months to negotiate for the fight, or at least he shouldn’t need that much time.

“I still don’t think he’ll [Mayweather] fight me. I think he doesn’t want to be beaten, but I think he just wants the undefeated record, and that’s the reason he won’t fight me,” Khan said.

Of course, Mayweather isn’t going to likely fight Khan. There’s no upside in fighting the likes of Khan, and besides that it would likely be an ugly fight with Khan doing a lot of holding and moving. The money that Mayweather would make from the UK market from the fight probably wouldn’t be enough to offset the money he would lose from the U.S pay-per-view sales for fighting him.

The casual boxing fans don’t know who Khan is in the U.S because he’s not been a highly visible fighter long enough in the U.S. It takes a while for a fighter to get known in a country as big as America, and Khan has only had 10 of his fights during his career take place in the U.S, and I’m not sure how many of those fights were actually televised.

Even if it were all of them, you’re not going to get well-known in the U.S after just 10 fights. I’m sorry, it takes longer than 10 fights to become a marketable fighter in America. I mean, look at Gennady Golovkin. He’s been fighting in the U.S off and on since 2013, and he’s still not fully known by the casual boxing fans. It takes a while to pick up a lot of fans.

Khan was almost beaten in his last fight by Chris Algieri last April. Khan looked like a fighter who is beginning to fade. I think Algieri exposed Khan badly in that fight. How is Mayweather supposed to fight someone who looked as bad as Khan did in his last fight?

Hopefully Khan will get the Pacquiao fight in early 2016, but I doubt it. If he fails to get the fight, he’ll likely have nothing to show for his lost time spent in negotiations. At best, I could see Khan being rushed back into the ring in December and put in with either another old timer or a fringe contender with no punching power.



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