By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. took a lot of heat from fans last September when he bowed out of the sport with an easy mismatch against 32-year-old Andre Berto at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fans wanted to see Mayweather fight the likes of Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman or Gennady Golovkin for his final fight. Mayweather took the easy way out with the Berto fight.
When Mayweather was asked earlier this week on his UK tour why he hadn’t fought Khan before retiring, Mayweather said that it wasn’t the right time for the fight. He then brought up his fight against Manny Pacquiao by saying that fight took time.
Mayweather’s answer didn’t seem to make much sense unless you were able to decipher his code speak. What I got out of it was that the Khan fight came at the wrong point of his career. If Khan had been around when Mayweather was younger, he probably would have taken it. But the fact that the fight presented itself when Mayweather was in his late 30s, he chose not to take it. In other words, Mayweather ducked the Khan fight.
“I think everything is about timing…even like with the Manny Pacquiao/Floyd Mayweather fight, a lot of people didn’t think that fight would happen, but everything takes time,” Mayweather said to Fighthype.com.. “It’s obvious the time wasn’t right, so the fight didn’t happen.”
It sounds like Mayweather didn’t fancy the fight with Khan at the tail end of his career. It would have been a very tough fight for Mayweather. Even if he did beat Khan, it would have been a fight where Mayweather was extended and made to look bad at times. It wouldn’t have been anything like Mayweather’s fights against older guys like Manny Pacquiao and Andre Berto, and definitely wouldn’t have been like his many recent fights against slower fighters. In the last two years of his career, Mayweather fought a lot of slow guys like Marcos Maidana, Robert Guerrero and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.
Was that by accident that Mayweather fought slower guys or was it on purpose? I think it was more of the latter. Khan would have made it tough on Mayweather, and I don’t think he wanted that.
It’s not too late for Mayweather to come back and fight Khan if he defeats Canelo on May 7. If Mayweather could stop spending his money for a little while with his endless shopping sprees, he could take the time to fight Khan so that fans can find out who the better fighter is of the two.
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