By Scott Gilfoid: If you’re wondering why Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 6 KOs) is facing Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KOs) this Saturday night instead of someone like Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs), Mayweather says because there’s really no difference between the two fighters. Mayweather notes that both Berto and Khan have three losses each, and both of them are two-time world champions.
To Mayweather, there’s nothing that separates one over the other to give that fighter the edge. Mayweather says he picked Berto because he’s been looking very good lately with his recent wins over Josesito Lopez and Steven Upsher Chambers. In contrast, Khan is coming off of a life and death struggle with light welterweight Chris Algieri last May in a fight that could have gone either way.
To say that Khan looked poor in that fight is being kind to him. He looked absolutely horrible in beating Algieri by a controversial 12 round decision at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The fight didn’t draw well, and that obviously didn’t help Khan’s case for trying to get a fight against Mayweather.
Algieri is the same fighter that Manny Pacquiao effortlessly beat last November by a lopsided 12 round decision in a fight where Algieri was dropped six times. I’m sure that Khan’s adviser selected Algieri with the hopes that Khan would be able to beat him as easily as Pacquiao did. If Khan had been able to defeat Algieri in the same effortless manner that Pacquiao did, it would have shown Mayweather that Khan is in the same class as Pacquiao. But instead if backfired on Khan, with him struggling to win a fight that many boxing fans think he should have lost.
“Andre Berto has three losses, and Amir Khan has three losses,” Mayweather said to the media. Andre Berto is a two-time world champion. Amir Khan is a two-time world champion. It really doesn’t matter who I face. They’re still going to try and find a way to say this isn’t the guy. When I beat this guy, they’re going to say he wasn’t good enough. Right now in boxing the top guys are Pacquiao, Canelo and Cotto. I’m saying these are your top three guys, and of course I faced all three and we know what the results were,” Mayweather said.
What Mayweather isn’t saying is that Berto has an edge over Khan because he’s better known to the casual boxing fans in the United States than Khan. It’s not just that Khan and Berto are equal in terms of losses and career accomplishments. The real area where there’s separation between them is in terms of familiarity with the casual fans.
Mayweather did the smart thing by picking out there better known fighter for his fight on Saturday. Yeah, the fight probably won’t bring in a lot of PPV buys on Showtime pay-per-view, but I think it would have been even worse had Mayweather selected Khan as his opponent. The casual fans wouldn’t know who Khan is in the U.S, and there aren’t enough hardcore boxing fans in the country to ensure success for Mayweather in terms of PPV sales.
Comments are closed.