Hearn thinks Khan is wasting time chasing Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 11/05/2015 - Comments

hearn7890By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan has put his career temporarily in a holding pattern while waiting to see if his management can negotiate a fight with Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao for April 9th next year.

It’s not looking promising for the 28-year-old Khan, though. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has been mentioning two of his Top Rank stable fighters (Terence Crawford and Timothy Bradley) that he’s keen to match against Pacquiao for his final fight of his career on 4/9, and that would seem to be the likely direction that the 83-year-old American promoter will take Pacquiao in for his next fight.

IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn thinks that Khan is wasting his time pursuing a fight against Pacquiao just like he wasted time trying to get a fight against superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the last two years.

Hearn thinks that Khan is stalling out his career by electing to chase fighters that have little interest in fighting him. Hearn sees Brook as the perfect opponent for Khan because it would give him the huge payday that he’s been looking for his entire pro career.

“I don’t believe Pacquiao will get in the ring because there’s little reward for him,” Hearn said to skysports.com. “For Khan, there’s his biggest pay-day, a fight that will go down in the history of British boxing and a world title on the line.”

I agree with Hearn that Pacquiao won’t fight Khan. However, I don’t believe it’s Pacquiao who doesn’t want that fight. I think it’s Arum. I see him preferring that Pacquiao end his career with a fight against one of his Top Rank stable fighters in Crawford of Bradley. It’s a win-win situation for Arum if Pacquiao fights one of those guys. It’s obviously not a great deal for Pacquiao to fight those guys because he’ll probably be lucky to get even 400,000 PPV buys.

There was a time in the past that you could count on at least 800,000 buys for a fight between Pacquiao and Bradley, but I think those days are gone. The boxing fans have already seen that fight twice, and it’s played out like an oil well that can no longer pump oil.

Arum isn’t thinking clearly in going back to that well looking for more oil. It’s dry. Khan will bring in more money than Crawford and Bradley in my view, but I don’t’ think Arum will do that fight because I see him staying in house and making sure he lets Pacquiao fight one of his own guys in his Top Rank stable.

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“Khan’s career has stalled already. He’s been waiting for the Floyd Mayweather Jr fight and that hasn’t happened and now he’s waiting on Pacquiao, and I don’t believe that will happen either,” Hearn said.

Khan’s career has definitely stalled since his loss to Brook in 2012. We’re talking three years of crummy fights for Khan since then. Hearn’s fighter Kell Brook’s career isn’t going to so well either, but in his case it’s more of a failure to launch rather than him having stalled out his career.

Brook has been spoon fed for 11 years as a pro, and he’s only had one tough opponent in Shawn Porter. That wasn’t a big fight. Brook has never had a big fight, and there’s no telling when he ever will. You can’t say that his fight against Diego Chaves will be a big fight. That’s another minor league fight as well.

Hearn is talking about wanting to match Brook against WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley after the Chaves fight. That’s not a bight. Bradley isn’t a huge star in the U.S., and there’s no way on earth that they’ll be able to put that fight on HBO PPV. Hearn might try and convince Sky to put it on Box Office, but even that’s a huge reach.

Brook-Bradley isn’t PPV worthy. At this point I don’t see anyone out there other than Khan that Brook can get a big payday against, and there’s no telling when Khan will finally decide to take the fight.

“There’s talk of Khan fighting Danny Garcia again. Some will feel that’s as tough a fight as the Brook fight but I guarantee you the Brook fight will pay twice the money, so I don’t understand,” Hearn said.

Khan vs. Garcia would be a good fight for the U.S., and it would give Khan the chance to avenge one of his defeats on his resume. He’s also interested in facing Lamont Peterson again to erase the loss that he suffered in 2011. Khan can’t fight Breidis Prescott again because his career has really imploded since his 1st round knockout win over Khan in 2008.

Hearn should focus on trying to build up Brook’s name by putting him in with the best fighters possible. I think he should start looking to match him up against junior middleweights and middleweights like Jermall Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Daniel Jacobs, Peter Quillin, Andy Lee, Billy Joe Saunders and Gennady Golovkin.

I think Brook would become a heck of a lot more popular facing those guys than him wasting his career fighting the likes of Frankie Gavin, Diego Chaves, Jo Jo Dan, Vyacheslav Senchenko and Carson Jones. Brook’s match-making has been nothing short of a joke his entire career, and that obviously has held him back from becoming a huge star.



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