By William Mackay: Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan may find it difficult trying to land a big money fight against WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr., as he’s not particularly impressed with Khan’s fighting style, according to fighthype.com. This would be a huge blow to Khan if Mayweather decides he doesn’t want any part of fighting him because Khan is moving up in weight to 147 just to try and get a fight with Mayweather.
Indeed, Mayweather thought that Khan should have been disqualified during his last fight against Lamont Peterson last December for Khan’s “Running and holding.”
Here’s what Mayweather said to fighthype.com: “I don’t know too much about Amir Khan. I think he does too much running and holding. I honestly feel he should have got disqualified.”
Ouch! Mayweather Jr. is likely talking about where Khan was grabbing Peterson’s head and pulling down on it all night, as well as putting him in headlocks and shoving him around the ring. Oddly enough, the head pulling down never resulted in one penalization from the referee, but there were frequent warnings for this foul.
What eventually cost Khan points was his constant shoving of Peterson when he would get in close to try and fight on the inside. Boxers use this foul from time to time, but Khan was doing it quite frequently against Peterson and was ignoring the referee when he warning him that he needed to stop. If it wasn’t Khan shoving, it was him grabbing Peterson by the back of the head and then yanking him forward where Khan would often lean down with his chin on Peterson’s back while holding his head down with both hands. It looked completely dirty it was a wonder that the referee allowed because Peterson said it caused his back to really tighten up due to Khan doing this maneuver so frequently. It seemed pretty clear that Khan was using these fouls to escape the inside pressure from Peterson, as Khan didn’t have the inside fighting skills to compete with Peterson in close and had to use the shoving to create distance and/or the head pulling down bit to stymie Peterson’s attacks. It was like a boxer facing a wrestler at times, and it’s scary to think that Khan has gotten away with these kinds of fouls in past fights.
Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of Mayweather Promotions, said “No,” when someone asked if Mayweather would be okay with fighting a rematch against Victor Ortiz on May 5th. Ortiz suddenly finds himself without an opponent after his previously scheduled February 11th opponent Andre Berto suffered a ruptured left bicep that caused him to postpone the fight date. Mayweather already beat Ortiz by a 4th round TKO last September.
Mayweather said he might be open to fighting Ortiz in the future after he picks up some good victories. It’s unclear how many wins Ortiz would have to chock up and against what kinds of opponents that Mayweather would find acceptable. Ortiz could lose to good fighters if he faces someone too good. Right now it’s looking like Ortiz will be out of action for at least half of 2012 while he waits for the winner of the Devon Alexander vs. Marcos Maidana fight to emerge.
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