By Sean McDaniel: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) seems confused in a recent article in discussing the lack of interest in his upcoming fight against Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) on Saturday night at the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester, England. Khan thought that boxing fans would want to see him fight the little known McCloskey after Khan’s exciting fight against Marcos Maidana last December.

Unfortunately, the interest from fans haven’t been as much as he’d like, as advanced sales for the previoulsly scheduled PPV fight on Sky were poor. Eventually, Sky decided to cut their losses rather than eating them by moving the fight off of PPV to Sky 3. In response, Khan, still insisting that this was a PPV worthy fight, moved from Sky to Primetime PPV, a move that may or may not hurt his relationship with Sky Sports in the future. It will be interesting to see how many buys the Khan-McCloskey fight ends up with on Primetime. It may not be many, and it could be that Khan made a huge error in moving the fight off of Sky 3, which would have made it available to be seen by as many as 700,000 subscribers.

Speaking with sportinglife.com, Khan said “I really thought coming back home now after the last 15 months where I haven’t fought in England I’d have someone supporting it [Khan-McCloskey]. I really thought this would have been a massive fight, especially after I had a great fight last year and won the best fight of the year.”

Khan seriously misjudged fans by opting to fight a little known fighter like McCloskey to fight rather than someone that boxing fans are aware of and who would have a good chance of beating him. Hopefully, Khan learns from this and fights better opposition in the future.