By Scott Gilfoid: It kind of goes without saying that Amir Khan’s career has been in quicksand for the last three years since his knockout loss to Danny Garcia in 2012. Khan stopped fighting the best after that loss, which was his second in a row at the time.
Khan has since won his last five fights against weak opposition. What’s kind of surprising though is that despite Khan having stopped fighting the top talents in the sport, he sees himself as the best fighter in the 147lb division.
That’s hard to believe because Khan hasn’t faced the best in the welterweight division, and he failed twice in a row in the last two fights where he took on high quality opposition.
“I believe I am the best welterweight out there,” Khan said recently, “and I desperately want to prove it,” Khan said to premierboxingchampions.com.
Well, Khan will at least get the chance of possibly showing that he’s one of the best in the welterweight division if he faces IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook next year and proves that he can beat him. But there would still be other fighters at welterweight for Khan to prove himself against if he wanted to stand up and crow about him being the best at 147.
Khan would still need to fight Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman, Errol Spence, Tim Bradley and then avenge his losses to Danny Garcia, Lamont Peterson and Breidis Prescott. Manny Pacquiao is on his way out of the sport in April of next year, so I won’t hold it against Khan if he doesn’t fight him, because that’s out of his control. The same with Khan not having to fight Marcos Maidana again, because I don’t think Maidana will ever fight again.
“I’d love to take them both on,” Khan said about wanting to fight Pacquiao and Brook. “As for Kell, that would be an incredible battle of Britain. He is from Yorkshire, I’m from Lancashire. It’s a matchup that would sell out any football stadium in the country.”
Khan won’t have any problems at all making the fight against Brook, because that’s one fighter who really wants to fight him. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn already said this week that he’d like to make a fight against Khan in the summer of 2016.
Khan is saying he’d like to fight Brook in May of next year. I’m not sure if a fight between the two guys can get made that soon because Brook has a fight coming up in early 2016 against likely Kevin Bizier that Brook will need to get out of the way first before he takes on Khan in a fight that Khan would like to be staged at Wembley Stadium.
Khan’s star has slipped so much since 2012 due to him failing to fight the best at 147, I wouldn’t be surprised if the fight against Brook fails to sell out Wembley and bring in a lot of PPV buys on Sky Box Office.
I wouldn’t want to pay to see Khan fight Brook. I wouldn’t pay to see Khan fight, and I would definitely never pay to see Brook fight anyone other than Jermall Charlo, Gennady Golovkin, Miguel Cotto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. None of the welterweights would be interesting for a fight against Brook because there will be no big names left after Pacquiao retires.
Comments are closed.