Khan said he was told Canelo fight had to be at 155

By Boxing News - 03/13/2016 - Comments

1-CaneloKhanOlive_Hoganphotos2-olivetreeBy Dan Ambrose: Amir Khan is denying that he was the one that wanted to fight at 155lbs for Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s WBC middleweight title.

Canelo told the media this past week that the reason why he and Khan are fighting at 155lbs on May 7th, was because Khan wanted to fight for his WBC middleweight title in their fight on HBO pay-per-view. However, Khan says he was given no choice in the matter.

Khan attempted to get the fight lower than 155lbs, but he was told by that the fight had to take place at 155. He then readily agreed to the 155lb weight.

It makes zero sense for Khan to negotiate for a higher weight of 155lbs when he’s facing someone as big as Canelo. You have to wonder whether Canelo was told something different from his team about what Khan was asking for in the negotiations, because he doesn’t seem to be on the same page as Khan. Why would Khan ask for a higher weight off 155lbs rather than to get a lower weight that would help him out? 155lbs helps Canelo, not Khan.

Here’s what Canelo recently said to the media about Khan being the one that asked for the 155lb catch-weight:

“Amir wanted an opportunity to fight for the middleweight title, so that’s the reason this is at 155lbs. To be able to fight for it, it has to be in margin of middleweight. I would have liked to fight for a title at super welterweight. I was thinking of fighting for a title at 154lbs, but then this fight was made.”

YouTube video

If Canelo wanted to fight at a lower weight, then might want to sit down with Khan and renegotiate the contract. I’m sure Khan would be open to changing the weight to 152 to 154. Khan seems to be very interested in fighting Canelo at 152, just like Floyd Mayweather Jr. did. If Canelo really believes that he’s not a middleweight, then he should have no problems with melting down a couple of pounds to get to 152 to accommodate Khan and make the fight a little fairer in terms of weight.

“That’s not true,” Khan said to Fighthype.com about him insisting that the Canelo fight take place at 155. “The third biggest name in boxing is Canelo Alvarez. I took that fight, and they told me it’s only going to happen at 155. I said that’s fine. I tried to negotiate a little lower, but they wouldn’t have it. So maybe Canelo was told differently. It was lost in the translation. I didn’t want to make it at 155. I wanted to make it a little bit lower, even 153 would have been perfect. I think that’s where Floyd [Mayweather Jr.] fought him at. We did a couple of press conferences together. He [Canelo] looked very big, thick, wide, he looked. I’m a little taller than him. He did look quite heavy at the press conferences. I know he has 20 pounds to lose or more [to make the 155lb catch-weight]. He did look very, very heavy, especially when we did an HBO ad, where he had to take his top off. He was at least 20 pounds over,” said Khan.

20 pounds + 155 = 175. So Khan is saying that he thinks Canelo was around 175lbs when he was with him during their press conferences and for his photo opt with HBO for their ad. That’s a lot of weight for Canelo to have to boil down in order to get to the 155lb catch-weight limit. Of course, Eric Gomez, the vice president of Golden Boy Promotions, recently said that Canelo doesn’t really weigh-in at 174lbs, when he steps foot into the ring for his fights.

Gomez says that the 174lbs was done with a scale in the back while Canelo had all his clothes on. HBO didn’t comment on this subject, so it’s difficult to know whether what Gomez is saying is true or not. Khan seems to be a pretty good judge about someone’s size. After all, he’s been in the sport for many years. He probably knows what a 175lb fighter looks like at this point.

As far as the weight goes for the fight, you have to wonder why Canelo seems to think that Khan was the one that asked for the 155lbs. Is Canelo isolated from what’s going on in the negotiations? If so, he needs to be filled in by Golden Boy so that he knows what’s going on.



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