By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan has been working out feverishly lately in trying to get in shape for his hoped for fight against WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 3rd in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather hasn’t said a world yet about who he’ll be fighting next – Khan or Marcos Maidana – but there’s a good chance that he’s going to leave Khan at the starting game and go with Maidana.
The way that Khan is working out, I hope that he at least has planned for the possibility that Mayweather will ignore his twitter/Facebook poll victory and go with the fighter that he perceives is the better fit for the Cinco de Mayo holiday weekend. That would probably be Maidana unless Mayweather has someone else in mind that he’s kept hidden from the boxing public.
“I’ll still fight in May regardless of whatever happens,” he said to Fighthype. “Early May or end of April, I want to fight because I want to keep myself busy, you know. I’ve been at it for a long time, so I definitely have a date around that time, yeah. We’re going to get a Plan B opponent, hopefully take that fight, and still work our way towards a Mayweather fight. Look, the aim and the goal is to fight Floyd Mayweather and to keep working towards that fight. That’s what we’re hoping for.”
With Khan having been out of the ring for 10 months since his last fight, I wouldn’t expect his plan B opponent to be any better than the last two guys that Golden Boy Promotions dragged into the ring for him to fight. He beat Carlos Molina and Julio Diaz. Obviously, he can’t fight them again, so I wonder who Golden Boy will match him up with? Khan said that he’s meeting with Golden Boy this week at their head quarters to discuss his next fight. Presumably, Golden Boy’s CEO Richard Schaefer will mention a backup plan for Khan by having him fight one of their stable fighter. I just hope Khan doesn’t turn them down left and right.
Schaefer will likely offer Khan a fight against the likes of Lucas Matthysse, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Devon Alexander, Robert Guerrero and Lamont Peterson. Out of that bunch, Porter would seem to be the best option for Khan because he has the IBF welterweight title in his possession. If Khan can defeat Porter, he’d be increasing his chances of getting a Mayweather fight in September or in 2015, because it would be a unification match and Mayweather might see that as more tempting than just fighting Khan without a title.
I don’t think Khan would ever agree in a million years to fighting Thurman or Matthysse. Golden Boy will still offer him those fights, but they jit much too hard for a rusty Khan off of a year of inactivity.
What I hope we don’t see is Khan sitting on his backside and deciding he’ll try and wait Mayweather out until September. That would be so sad because Khan would be out of the ring for over a year and a half by the time he got the Mayweather fight. Just sitting there waiting for the fight like a mother hen is a waste of Khan’s career. I don’t know what the hang up is for him, but he’s got to be able to take risks by fighting. It looks to me like Khan is staying out of the ring because he’s afraid of getting beaten before he gets the payday bout against Mayweather. That’s like a retirement bout for Khan due to the big money he;d be getting for the fight.
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