(Photo credit: Ester Lin/Showtime) By Chris Williams: Amir Khan believes his ex-trainer Freddie Roach is trying to get in the way of a potential mega fight between Khan and WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr with Roach’s recent comments about Khan supposedly having been knocked out by Manny Pacquiao in sparring.

Khan denies having been knocked out by Pacquiao, and he says he gave the Filipino fighter all kinds of problems. Khan believes that Roach is making these comments because he wants his fighter Pacquiao to get the Mayweather fight in 2015 instead of him.

“Freddie upset because I left him, and he knows I’m very close to getting the Floyd Mayweather Jr fight,” Khan was quoted as saying to the manchestereveningnews.co.uk. “He’s trying to sabotage that because they want the fight themselves. Pacquiao hasn’t even got close to knocking me out.”

If Khan wasn’t knocked out by Pacquiao in sparring then you it’s curious why Roach would all of a sudden be saying that he was knocked out. Could it be that Roach doesn’t remember the details of the sparring and has Khan mixed up with one of Pacquiao’s other many sparring partners? Or is this a case of Roach trying to build Pacquiao’s fame up to make him look better than he actually is.

You normally doesn’t get trainers bragging about their fighters beating up well-known fighters in sparring sessions, because the sparring sessions are frequently considered off limits in terms of being talked about.

Sparring partners are brought in to do a job of mimicking a particular fighter or to give the champion some work. They’re not brought in to go all out and try and knock the champion out. That’s why it’s kind of useless to even talk about sparring sessions because they mean so little. The fighters are wearing head gear and large gloves, and it’s nothing like a real fight.

Roach is probably kidding himself if he thinks that Pacquiao is going to get a fight against Mayweather in 2015. The chances of that happening are likely slim and none. That doesn’t mean the fight can’t happen, but for it to happen we’re probably looking at Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum having to accept a small 70-30 purse split or smaller.

I don’t think Mayweather is going to give them a 60-40 split due to Pacquiao’s deteriorating pay-per-view numbers. Mayweather isn’t going to want to give Pacquiao a good split of the revenue if he hasn’t proven that he can bring in comparable pay-per-view buys.