By Dan Ambrose: With the news that news that Sky Sports has decided to move Amir Khan’s April 16th bout against Paul McCloskey to Sky Sports 3 instead of pay-per-view, Khan is said to be losing as much as £1 million pounds from this move by Sky. The card lacks a co-main event with Matthew Macklin vs. Khoren Gevor being cancelled and the replacement bout Tyson Fury vs. Hasim Rahman going up in smoke after Rahman decided he didn’t want to take the trip to the UK on short notice.
This all leads you to the question of why Khan didn’t choose to fight Breidis Prescott in a rematch instead of selecting for a weaker puncher in McCloskey. Khan made a big production about wanting this fight to take place in the UK rather than the United States, wanting to give something back to his fans by letting them see him fight. However, where Khan seems to have gone wrong is by choosing to fight McCloskey rather than Prescott.
Boxing fans, even ones from the UK, aren’t too familiar with McCloskey and the fight lacked a lot of interest from the very start. Now with the card being pretty much empty of intriguing fights, Sky has decided to take it off of PPV and put it on regular free television. Khan could have avoided this from happening had he chosen to fight Prescott. Khan may have moved past that fight but boxing fans are still interested in seeing that match-up and Khan would have been able to put that on PPV without any problems. The fight would have stood on it’s own.
Prescott may have been considered too dangerous for Khan in a rematch because of how well suited Khan was for his style of fighting. Khan seemed tailor made for Prescott’s hooks and a rematch might not change any of that. Khan would be tested early and often by Prescott, and Khan’s running and short flurries wouldn’t keep him from getting hit on a regular basis. You don’t beat Prescott without getting hit, and Khan would have have had his chin checked.
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