Is Mayweather more at risk against Khan and Thurman rather than Pacquiao?

By Rob Smith - 09/29/2014 - Comments

While many boxing fans believe that Manny Pacquiao presents the biggest risk to the unbeaten record of Floyd Mayweather Jr, Paulie Malignaggi is under the belief that Pacquiao would be an easy fight for Mayweather at this stage in Pacquiao’s career. Malignaggi doesn’t say why he believes that but it could have something to do with how poor Pacquiao looked in his last fight against a quality fighter in Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012.

Pacquiao looked terrible in that fight before getting knocked out in the 6th round. Since then, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has eased him back in terms of competition by putting him in with Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley, and Pacquiao was able to resume winning again.

Malignaggi thinks that Amir Khan and Keith Thurman would be a bigger risk to Mayweather than Pacquiao. Khan’s hand speed is something that Malignaggi believes would give Mayweather problems. With Thurman, it would be his power as well as his defensive skills. He’s not as fast as Khan, but he’s a guy that makes you pay when you attempt to hit him with anything.

“Probably guys like Amir Khan and Keith Thurman are more dangerous to Floyd Mayweather than Manny Pacquiao is at this point,” Malignaggi said to ESPN.com. “I think it’s [Pacquiao] a pretty easy fight for Floyd Mayweather to win. Guys like Keith Thurman and Amir Khan will really, really put a big risk to the perfect record of Floyd Mayweather.”

We’ll probably never find out if Malignaggi is right about Khan and Thurman being more dangerous, because neither of them are marketable enough for Mayweather to use up his last two fights of his career against them. Mayweather is likely going to be looking to fight the most marketable fighter that he can, and Khan and Thurman aren’t popular enough in the United States for Mayweather to bring in the large amount of PPV buys that he saw in his fights against Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

Khan has fast hand speed, but he mostly holds nowadays that’s something that will hurt his chances of getting a fight against Mayweather because he’s not going to want to be fighting someone who will be clinching 10 times or more per round like Khan does now.