(Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime) By Eric Thomas: Amir Khan has been sitting idle since April of this year with the hopes of getting a dream bout against unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. next May on Cinco de Mayo. Khan is so sure that he’s going to get the fight with Mayweather Jr. that he chose not to take an important fight against IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander that his promoters at Golden Boy were trying to set up for him.
That fight would have given Khan a good payday while at the same time legitimized him in the minds of many fans. But IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins dropped a mini-bomb in a press release today saying that important people had spoken to him about him fighting Mayweather Jr. and Hopkins said he was agreeable to taking the fight as long as he would only be required to get down to 160 lbs. instead of 154 or 147.
Hopkins said “They didn’t act like they were joking, and we’re talking powerful people.”
Hopkins has a fight this Saturday against Karo Murat in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and if Hopkins can win that fight in an impressive fashion, we could see him as the potential opponent for Mayweather on May 3rd next year instead of Khan.
So where does this leave Khan if he gets passed over by Mayweather? Khan would need to look around and try to take the safest fight possible because he would still have a very good chance of fighting Mayweather once he got the Hopkins fight out of the way. As long as Khan doesn’t take another embarrassing loss, he would remain a very viable option for Mayweather to fight in the second half 2014. But Khan has to keep busy in order to remain an interesting opponent, because once you stop fighting for a lengthy amount of time, the boxing public quickly forgets about you entirely. Khan has already missed out one fight this year by choosing not to face Alexander. He can’t afford to just sit and wait for Mayweather to fight him in August of 2014 without fighting at least once before then.
Hopkins vs. Mayweather would be an interesting fight for Mayweather’s sake because a victory over the 48-year-old Hopkins would help cement his legacy as the best fighter of all time. Stepping up and beating Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in the junior middleweight division was very impressive for Mayweather, but if he can beat a guy like Hopkins, it would make Mayweather look incredibly good.
Hopkins would be a lot heavier than Mayweather if they were to face each other, but there’s a chance that Hopkins likely top out at only 175 lbs. He’s not going to balloon up in weight 20 pounds like some fighters do because he’s not that kind of guy. If he was to drain down to 160 to fight Mayweather, Hopkins would do it by taking off a lot of muscle by eating light and doing a lot of aerobic activities to work on thinning out his muscles. With Hopkins’ spartan discipline, he would definitely make the weight and fight well at 160 just like he did when he campaigned as a middleweight for most of his career.
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