By Scott Gilfoid: After saying that he wouldn’t be able to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) this September due to Ramadan, Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) has reversed course and is now saying that he thinks he might be able to take the fight against Mayweather in September after all.
Mayweather just finished his May fight against Manny Pacquiao, and he’s now looking at selecting opponent for his September fight. Mayweather doesn’t have a lot of time to rest after his victory before he needs to make his selection and start training for the fight.
Mayweather hasn’t said whether or not he’s interested in facing Khan in September though. He said over the weekend that his next opponent is someone that he wants to fight. He might not even bother facing Khan. The only person that is pushing the Khan-Mayweather fight is Khan, not Mayweather.
“I’m not ruling out fighting in September because it’s possible that it could happen,” Khan told Skysports.com. “Mayweather only fights in mid-September and Ramadan will be a little earlier this year, which helps. It gives me enough time to get the training done. So it can happen in September.”
Khan, 28, is overlooking his May 29th opponent Chris Algieri (20-1, 8 KOs) in their fight at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York. Algieri isn’t a push over for most fighters, and he might be able to surprise Khan by scoring an upset.
If Algieri is smart, he’s working on his punching power for this fight because the one area where Khan is vulnerable is in his chin department. He doesn’t take shots too well, and he can definitely be knocked out. Even when he’s not knocked out, he’s clearly bothered when he gets hit hard.
Khan has been talking about having been approached by Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe during the Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight last Saturday night and given an indication by Ellerbe that he’s a possible opponent for Mayweather in September. Interestingly enough, Ellerbe himself hasn’t surfaced to verify as truth what Khan says about the meeting, so we’re kind of stuck going only by what Khan is saying about Ellerbe approaching him.
“Mayweather…did what he had to do to win the fight” Khan said. “His work rate dropped tremendously because of his age. There were a few things there that I’d not seen before. When he takes a good shot he does panic.”
One of the reasons why Mayweather wasn’t throwing a lot of punches last Saturday was because he was trying to prevent from getting nailed by a lot of Pacquiao’s counter shots. Pacquiao was setting a lot of traps for Mayweather, and just looking to open up with a flurry.
Pacquiao was also sitting on left hands, just waiting for Mayweather to throw his shots so that he could counter him with the kind of left hands that he knocked Ricky Hatton out with in their fight in 2009. Mayweather was smart enough to realize that it wouldn’t be smart for him to open up with a lot of punches and let Pacquiao nail him with something big.
“The only way to catch Floyd is with speed and explosiveness, which Manny had, but Manny didn’t use that enough in the fight,” Khan said.
It sounds like Khan has his mind made up that he’s going to try and throw combinations against Mayweather if he gets selected by him for the September fight.
I don’t think that’s going to work too well for Khan if he tries that strategy, but you can’t tell Khan that. He fights the way he wants to, and then suffered the after effects by getting knocked out or badly beaten.
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