By Scott Gilfoid: The belt-less Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) has given WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) until the middle of January to start negotiations with him for a fight.
If Mayweather shows no hint of wanting to take a fight against the 28-year-old Khan, then Khan says he’ll start looking elsewhere for other fights.
It’s interesting that Khan is willing to waste more time waiting on a fight against Mayweather, because it’s plainly obvious that Mayweather isn’t interested in taking a fight against him.
I mean, Mayweather already spelled it out in a recent interview where he said that Khan doesn’t have a big enough name for him to want to use one of his remaining fights against him.
Mayweather wants to face only big names that guarantee him a large pay-per-view audience on Showtime, and Khan isn’t a pay-per-view fighter. Khan is a pay-per-view fighter in the UK, but not in the United States and that’s what Mayweather is concerned with.
“Last year I spent months chasing Mayweather,” said Khan via the express.co.uk. “That is absolutely not going to happen again. I will give it until the middle of January and if there are no signs he will come to the negotiation table, then I will look elsewhere.”
I’m pretty sure that Mayweather won’t lose any sleep after he finds out about Khan’s ultimatum. Mayweather has bigger fish to fry, as he’s looking to face the likes of Manny Pacquiao or Miguel Cotto in his next fight. Those are actual PPV stars. Khan is someone who is arguably a long, long way from becoming a pay-per-view fighter in the U.S, and I don’t know that he’ll ever rise to that level.
Right now, Khan is just a fighter with a 4-2 record in his last six fights, and that obviously isn’t the kind of record you need if you want to get a fight against the likes of Mayweather. There are exceptions of course if you’re someone like Marcos Maidana, but that was because of Maidana picking up a big win over Mayweather’s close friend Adrien Broner.
Who has Khan beaten in his last four fights? Devon Alexander, Luis Collazo, Julio Diaz and Carlos Molina. Those were not big wins, and there was nothing special about any of those fights. Alexander had been recently beaten by Shawn Porter, so the fact that Khan beat him as well was meaningless.
“I have to stay busy and I think my last two performances have shown I belong in the same ring as any welterweight in the world, including Mayweather,” Khan said.
I think a lot of boxing fans would disagree with Khan about him deserving a fight against Mayweather.
If Khan were to have beaten the likes of Keith Thurman, Kell Brook, Maidana, Lucas Matthysse, or Danny Garcia, then he could start crowing about him deserving a fight against Mayweather. But the guys that Khan has beaten are too average for him to get the Mayweather fight. That’s not Khan’s fault obviously. He’s not the one that sets up his fights.
His adviser Al Haymon and Golden Boy Promotions are the guys that make his fights. Khan should have vetoed their choices of Collazo, Alexander, Diaz and Collazo, and instead pushed them to match him against Maidana, Matthysse, Garcia, Brook and Thurman. Hindsight is 20-20, and Khan obviously blew it. He faced weaker opposition instead of the grade-A fighters, and now he’s being ignored by Mayweather.
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