Mayweather asks fans to vote on his next opponent for May 3rd

By Boxing News - 02/03/2014 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) is leaving it up to the fans to select his next opponent for his May 3rd fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. The options, as you would guess, is for fans to select from Amir Khan or Marcos Maidana. It seems like a fairly cut and dried selection for me, but of course I’m more logical about things like this. Maidana holds the WBA welterweight title, and is coming off of a huge victory over little Mayweather [Adrien Broner] from last December.

On the other side, you have a fighter who has lost 2 out of his last 4 fights in Amir Khan, and one of those two wins was a controversial one over Julio Diaz last April in London, UK. I had Khan losing that fight, but I wasn’t surprised when the judges gave Khan the victory. After all, the fight did take place in Khan’s home country of England.

I’m not sure exactly how Mayweather will be able to tabulate the votes, because he didn’t set up any mechanism for fans to select from Khan and Maidana. Mayweather simply said for fans to vote for the guy he should fight next. Well, my assumption is that Mayweather will lurk on a number of popular sites and get the gist of who fans want him to defeat next. Just in taking a quick look around on the web, I’m noticing that there are a great deal of fans who want to see Mayweather massacre, I mean, fight Khan next. I’m not surprised by that, because Khan is the more recognizable name with casual fans who don’t have much if a clue who Maidana is.

Hardcore fans obviously know enough about the sport to see that Khan doesn’t deserve a title shot against Mayweather, because Khan still hasn’t fought a solid fighter since being smashed in 2 rounds by Danny Garcia in 2012. Normally when a fighter gets thrashed the way Khan did against Garcia, they work themselves back into contention slowly, and then they redeem themselves by beating some top caliber opposition. With Khan, he’s done it backwards by facing weak opposition in beating Carlos Molina [the lightweight Molina, not the junior middleweight Molina] and a past his prime former IBF lightweight champion Julio Diaz.

If Mayweather selects Khan, I think he’s going to be making a mistake given that the fight will be taking place on Cinco de Mayo weekend in May. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that Mexican fans won’t be all that excited at seeing Mayweather fight Khan. It’s a choice that doesn’t make any sense at all for that weekend. Maidana isn’t Mexican, but I think Mayweather has a better shot at attracting Mexican fans with Maidana than he does with Khan. Besides that, there would be the whole revenge of the big brother thing that Golden Boy Promotions could play on with Mayweather getting revenge for Maidana beating his little imitator Broner. I think it would be interesting for that reason alone.



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