By Scott Gilfoid: It was assumed that Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) had finally gotten the message the message through his head that Floyd Mayweather Jr isn’t interested in facing him due to his lack of name recognition with the huge American pay-per-view audience.
Instead of Khan blabbering about Mayweather this past week, he turned his attention to Manny Pacquiao. I thought for a second that Khan had finally given up on his dreams of fighting Mayweather. However, in a tweet that Khan created today on his social media account, he said that his goal for this year is to beat Mayweather.
“Here’s my 2015 goal: To beat Floyd Mayweather in 2015,” Khan said on his twitter.
In the photo that Khan included with the tweet, he’s seen holding a sign up with the above quote. Khan has a big smile on his face as if he’s going to get a chance to achieve his goal.
I hate to be the one to break this to Khan, but I don’t see him getting a fight against Mayweather in 2015. Mayweather has other guys to fight that actually bring in fans to sell tickets and who can help out with the U.S pay-per-view sales.
The last thing Mayweather wants is a lead weight around his ankles, weighing him down and not helping out with the pay-per-view numbers in a significant way. Yes, Khan can bring in some pay-per-view cash in the UK, but the money over there is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the good clean cash that Mayweather can make in fighting the top guys like Manny Pacquiao, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Miguel Cotto in the U.S.
You’ve got to blame Khan for him not being a big enough star at this point to get the Mayweather fight. Look at it this way; if Khan had stepped it back up after he got whipped by Danny Garcia in 2012 by facing high quality opposition instead of the lesser guys he’s been feasting on, then he’d likely be a big enough star in the United States to have earned Mayweather’s attention.
Instead of Khan fighting guys like the light hitting Devon Alexander, Carlos Molina, Julio Diaz and Luis Collazo, Khan should have been fighting the likes of Kell Brook, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Adrien Broner, Lucas Matthysse and Marcos Maidana. Believe me, if Khan had beaten all of those guys, he’d have a huge fan base in the U.S and Mayweather would likely be jumping at the chance to fight him right now.
In hindsight, Khan royally blew it by letting his adviser pick out a bunch of softies for him for the past couple of years. Khan obviously had the final say so over the guys he fought, and he should have opened his trap and told his adviser and Golden Boy Promotions that he didn’t want to fight any soft jobs.
Yeah, Khan was able to turn his career around with the fodder that his adviser and Golden Boy fed him, but the cost was it kept him from becoming a bigger star in the U.S. The result of that, of course, is Mayweather having zero interest in fighting Khan due to his lack of name recognition among the American boxing fans.
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