Amir Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) is drawing a line in the sand with unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) by giving him a hard 5-day deadline for him to make up his mind whether he wants to fight him next or not. If Mayweather doesn’t choose to fight Khan in the next five days, Khan will move on presumably.
Khan didn’t say whether he would change his mind after the 5-day limit, but you can assume that the so-called limit wouldn’t keep Khan from still taking the fight.
It appears that Amir Khan hasn’t given up on steady pursuit of a career payday fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr despite the signs not looking good that he’ll be getting a fight against the superstar in 2015, if ever. Khan is now saying that he’s hearing from boxing experts that Mayweather is afraid of him.
Whether this is true or not impossible to tell, because it’s nothing more than speculation and guesswork from the so-called experts. What we do know is Mayweather feels that Khan doesn’t bring enough to a fight in terms of his popularity in the U.S, and for that reason he’s dismissing him as a potential opponent for him.
If he can’t get his desired fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in Las Vegas, IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch says he’ll be hanging up his gloves and going into retirement. He has no interest in taking plan-B backup options of facing Gennady Golovkin or Andre Ward, even though both of those fights would do quite well on British pay-per-view and would likely sell as well as Froch’s recent fights against George Groves.
Froch wants Chavez Jr because he thinks he can beat him, and he likes that Chavez Jr has a large Mexican fan population that follows him.
IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) appears to be having second thoughts about him walking away from the game in 2015. He’s been talking about retirement since the Lucian Bute fight in 2012, but in the last two years the talk has increased to the point where many boxing fans believed that he would retire after a proposed farewell fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr this year.
Froch now feels like he can continue fighting, and he’s talking about the Chavez Jr and even showing sudden interest in a possible James DeGale fight.
Amir Khan says that Floyd Mayweather Jr is running from him because he won’t agree to fight him. Khan instead is now targeting Manny Pacquiao for his next fight if the Filipino fighter doesn’t end up facing Mayweather next on May 2nd.
“Who wants to see Khan vs. Pacquiao because I know Mayweather’s running,” Khan said on his twitter.
I’m sure that a lot of boxing fans would love to see Pacquiao face Khan. If the only other alternative to a Mayweather fight is Jessie Vargas, then I can see a lot of fans seeing Khan as a much better choice. However, Khan is managed by Al Haymon, which would seem to be a huge barrier for Khan getting a fight against Pacquiao due to Haymon not working with Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum.
Nathan Cleverly is going to need to drop a ton of weight to get down to 175 for his next fight on April 11th in Lees. He’s moving from cruiserweight back down to light heavyweight where he hopes to get a crack at WBA World light heavyweight champion Jurgen Braehmer in the near future. That fight obviously won’t happen on April 11th, but that’s the direction Cleverly is being steered in.
First, however, he’s going to need to lose 25 pounds to get down to 175. This isn’t just 25 pounds of fat though. This is 25 pounds of muscle that Cleverly slowly put on in order to move up to cruiserweight. He won two out of his three fights in that weight class, but after his lethargic performance in losing to Tony Bellew last November, Cleverly decided he should move back down to light heavyweight.
Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) hasn’t fought in nearly a year since being blown out badly by Shawn Porter last year in April, but it now looks like Malignaggi may be starting to show interest in returning to the ring. Malignaggi is saying that a fight against IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (33-0, 22 KOs) is one that would be interested in.
Brook doesn’t have an opponent for his next fight in early 2015, and it’s quite possible he might be interested in someone like Malignaggi. Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn needs someone who is good but obviously not that good because Brook is fighting or the first time since suffering a thigh wound in a knife attack.
Amir Khan didn’t have much luck in getting Floyd Mayweather Jr to agree to fight him, so he’s now he’s put his focus on trying to get the highly popular Manny Pacquiao to face him in 2015. Khan is hopeful that the 36-year-old Pacquiao will say yes to a fight with him, and then agree to fight him in the UK.
Khan would like to stage the Pacquiao fight in the huge 90,000 seat Wembley Stadium in London. Khan obviously believes that the two of them would be able to sell out the stadium in the same way that IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch sold out the stadium in 2015 in his rematch with George Groves in May.
The International Boxing Federation (IBF) sent out a letter to IBF/WBA super middleweight champion Carl Froch (33-2, 24 KOs) on December 31st, ordering him to start the negotiation process with his IBF mandatory challenger James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs). If Froch fails to do this then the IBF will strip the 37-year-old Froch of his IBF title and then order #7 IBF Andre Dirrell to face DeGale for the vacant IBF strap.
Froch has been holding out for a fight against former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, because Froch believes that he’s a fighter popular enough for him to fight on pay-per-view in the United States. Chavez Jr has promotional issues with Top Rank, and it doesn’t look as if Froch will be able to get that fight with him anytime soon.
Amir Khan is reportedly giving Floyd Mayweather Jr a deadline of mid-January to start the negotiation process or else he’ll start looking at other alternatives for his next fight. Khan has been waiting around for a fight with Mayweather since 2013, and he’s been largely ignored by the popular fighter.
That hasn’t stopped Khan from pursuing him for a fight, but it seems to have backfired because Mayweather has shown little interest in facing the 28-year-old Khan. Either Khan hasn’t been fighting the right guys that would make him a popular enough fighter to interest Mayweather, or there’s some other reason that Mayweather isn’t telling.