By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya, the promoter for WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao both avoided Amir Khan by not giving him a fight. As far as the big names go, it was only Canelo that chose to face Khan and not the other two stars. Canelo will be facing Khan on May 7 on HBO PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mayweather and Pacquiao would probably disagree with De La Hoya about them having avoided Khan. They would probably say that a fight with Khan didn’t make sense in terms of dollars and sense because they had bigger names to fight. Mayweather used up his six-fight contract with Showtime/CBS fighting Robert Guerrero, Marcos Maidana, Canelo, Pacquiao and Andre Berto. Pacquiao’s last two fights of his career have been against Mayweather and he’ll be fighting next month against Tim Bradley.
De La Hoya believes that Khan will be entering the ring knowing that he’ll defeat Canelo. Khan does feel confident that he’ll beat Canelo after watching some of his recent fights and not being wowed by what he saw from Canelo.
“This is the biggest fight of Amir Khan’s career, and this is what he deserves,” said De La Hoya to Fighthype. “Amir Khan is a fighter that deserves the big events and big fights. He’s had fighters avoid him like Mayweather and Pacquiao. So this was a fight that was a must for us. I just believe you have speed vs. power, because it’s going to be a tremendous fight. Come May 7th, Amir Khan is going to go up in that ring knowing that he’s going to win the fight, but that’s who Amir Khan is, a fighter that’s very, very confident,” said De La Hoya.
It is nice that Canelo is giving Khan a fight, but it’s a lot easier for him to agree to fight Khan than it would be for the equally sized Mayweather and Pacquiao. Khan is a difficult style match-up for those guys due to his hand speed, mobility and his long reach.
Khan has a tendency of making his opponents look bad, and I don’t think Mayweather and Pacquiao would have wanted to deal with someone like that. But by the same token, Canelo isn’t rushing out to fight guys like Gennady Golovkin, Daniel Jacobs, and Peter Quillin. Those would be tough fights for Canelo potentially, and he might lose some or all of them. We’re also not seeing Canelo fight guys from the super middleweight division like Badou Jack, Arthur Abraham, or James DeGale. Those guys are bigger than Canelo in the same way that Khan is bigger than Mayweather and Pacquiao.
It’s easy for De La Hoya to make it out like it’s a big deal that Canelo is fighting Khan while Mayweather and Pacquiao didn’t, but it’s also true that Canelo is a lot bigger than Khan. Canelo is facing a smaller guy than himself in facing Khan. However, we’re not seeing Canelo fight guys his own size or bigger.
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