(Photo credit: Lucas Noonan/Premier Boxing Champions) By Scott Gilfoid: Despite failing to put in the impressive performance that fans felt that he needed to in order to get a Floyd Mayweather Jr. in September, Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) said he feels satisfied with his win over Chris Algieri (20-2, 8 KOs) last night, and he believes he’s rightfully earned the fight against Mayweather.
Further, Khan thinks he’ll have an easier time against Mayweather than he did Algieri because his fighting style suits him. Never the less, Khan did not look good in beating Algieri in their fight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
If you compare how Manny Pacquiao beat Algieri to how Khan did, it seems obvious that Khan isn’t in the same class as the Filipino fighter. Khan brushed off the comparison though, saying that Algieri fight much differently against him than he did against Pacquiao, and if he had fought Pacquiao the way he did him last night, then Algieri might have beaten the Filipino star. Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of boxing fans were buying that. They just felt that Khan simply wasn’t good enough to dominate Algieri no matter how the American fighter would have fought him.
“If it’s not Floyd Mayweather, there are other options. I would love to have a Floyd Mayweather fight. I still believe styles make fights, and Floyd has that style that would suit me, but let’s just see. I’m going to give it a week or two.”
I think Khan sounds deluded. Mayweather doesn’t suit him. It would be a nightmare for him.
Khan might have his moments against Mayweather, but it’s hard to picture Khan being able to beat him. Algieri was able to nail Khan with clean right hands all night long, and Algieri doesn’t have the hand speed and accuracy that Mayweather possesses. If Khan were to charge Mayweather with his style of fighting, he would open himself up to getting hit with a lot of straight right hands to the head. I believe those shots would wind up making Khan cautious in the same way they did with Pacquiao in his fight against Mayweather on May 2nd of this month. Once Khan turns cautious, the Mayweather-Khan fight would wind up a dull affair because Khan doesn’t have the aggressiveness to just take shots the way Marcos Maidana did in pressuring Mayweather. Khan accurately describes the Mayweather fight himself, calling it a “chess match.” I think it would wind up as a dull bout with Mayweather getting the better of Khan in a pot shot battle.
“I think with the last 3 to 4 fights at 147 that’s what he [Mayweather] wanted to see,” Khan said. “He [Mayweather] said ‘Amir, look, prove yourself at 147, then we can see if we’ll fight or not.’ I think I proved myself. Who else is out there for Floyd? I think I answered all the questions, and people want to see something different in a fight with Floyd.”
Khan has proven himself in beating Devon Alexander, Chris Algieri, and Luis Collazo. However, those guys aren’t known for being punchers, and it’s obvious that Khan has been steered around the big punchers in the 147 and the 140 pound division since his loss to Danny Garcia. Alexander, Algieri and Collazo are not punchers, and they’re the perfect opponents for someone with a known chin problem to face in order to keep him from getting knocked out.
The truth of the matter is Khan hasn’t proven himself yet. He’s just burned up three fights against three light punchers in the 147 pound division. The guys that Khan needed to fight in order to prove himself are as follows: Marcos Maidana [the 2015 version, not the 2010 version with referee Joe Cortez working the fight], Kell Brook and Keith Thurman. Khan needed to run the gauntlet against this bunch, and if he could have gone through them by beating all of them, then he would have proven himself worthy of a fight against Mayweather. But the fact that Khan didn’t fight them, shows to me that he’s still not ready for Mayweather because he hasn’t earned anything other than the right now to fight them. Khan has definitely earned the right to give Algieri a rematch, but he definitely hasn’t earned a fight against Mayweather in my view.
Khan beat Algieri by the scores of 115-113, 117-111 and 117-111. I’d say the 115-113 score was the most accurate score of the three.
“I’m getting better as I get older; I’m getting wiser,” Khan said at the post-fight press conference. “We didn’t expect Chris Algieri to come forward like he did. We thought he would be on the back foot so that we could start putting pressure on and breaking him down,” Khan said. “But obviously he showed a lot of heart in there, took some good shots, and kept coming back. Styles make fights, and obviously Chris Algieri had a style that was very tough for me to beat. He was very slick at times. I’ve been chasing him [Mayweather] a long time, and when you chase a fight, it’s very hard to focus on the fight you have in front of you. And then you have everyone saying that Chris Algieri was going to be a walk in the park. I’m very happy that I didn’t take the fight so lightly because obviously I would have come out of a beating if I did. That dream for me would have been gone against Floyd. I’m just going to let my adviser Al Haymon and my team decide what’s next for me. Obviously, Manny Pacquiao didn’t show what we thought he was going to show in that fight, but I do know exactly what to do now in the fight against Floyd. Obviously, he’s a very technical, a very skillful fighter, but I’ve just known for a long, long time that a style like that would definitely suit me. I did get caught at times [tonight] obviously.”
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