By Scott Gilfoid: After his very close and unimpressive 12 round unanimous decision win over Chris Algieri last Friday night in New York, Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) figures there is a ton of interest in a fight between him and Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) now.
Khan says the hype for the Khan-Mayweather fight is now huge, and that everywhere he goes, he’s bombarded with questions from fans who want to know “when are you going to fight Mayweather.” I personally don’t see much of any interest at all with fans wanting to see Mayweather vs. Khan, but I’m only dealing with the dedicated fans of the sport.
When I speak to casual fans about Amir Khan, they generally ask me “who is he?” That kind of tells you that Khan doesn’t really have much of a name among the casual fans of the sport. He’s just someone that the hardcore fans know about, which is why I don’t think there’s enough interest even with the hardcore fans in a Mayweather-Khan fight. I mean, Mayweather can fight pretty much any Joe off the street and bring in the same amount of PPV buys as a fight against Khan.
“The interest around the world [in Mayweather-Khan] is massive,” Khan said via Fighthype. “People are talking Mayweather, Mayweather, Mayweather. I think everybody wants it [Mayweather-Khan] now. I believe I’m the closest I’ve ever been towards getting it. Al Haymon is doing his job. He’s going to try and get me that fight. The hypes big for that fight. I’m going to have to be on my A-game. I can’t make any mistakes. Maybe Floyd is saying I’ll take this fight because obviously I think he’s beatable.”
Khan is seeing things backwards, I believe. Mayweather isn’t the type that wants to face guys that are fighting badly like Khan just finished doing against Algieri. Mayweather wants to fight guys that are well-respected and coming off a series of big wins.
Unfortunately, you can’t say that about Khan. He’s won his last five fights against weak opposition, and I imagine that if he doesn’t get the Mayweather fight in September, and it’s looking that way, then Khan will continue to face weak punchers in the foreseeable future. As such, I think Khan has got it backwards in believing that Mayweather will want to fight him more now after his horrible performance against Algieri. If anything, Mayweather will be turned off towards a fight against Khan, because his win over Algieri was the equivalent of a strong repellant.
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