By James Slater – It seems the prospect of an Amir Khan-Floyd Mayweather Junior “super-fight” has to be taken seriously. The brainchild of Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, Mayweather against Khan is now being looked at as a “Plan-B,” in case the fight we all want to see, Mayweather Vs. Manny Pacquiao, fails to materialise.
According to Mail online, Khan is “on standby” to fight “Money Mayweather” next September, if by that time Pacquiao-Mayweather has not been made. Khan has been told of the plan, and he is obviously very excited; even believing he is the fighter to take away the zero that has been at the end of Mayweather’s record since the mid-1990s..
“If we can’t make Mayweather-Pacquiao in the spring, it may be too late,” Schaefer said. “So this will give us time to build Amir into a pay-per-view superstar in the U.S.”
And the way the Bolton man will be built into this superstar is by having him come home from fights – first against Marcos Maidana and then against the winner of the upcoming Tim Bradley-Devon Alexander clash – with a victory. Khan, the ruling WBA light-welterweight champ, faces WBA interim champ and mandatory challenger Maidana on December 11th, in what will be his Las Vegas debut. Then, all being well, the former Olympian will look to unify the 140-pound division with a win over whoever it is that wins the Bradley-Alexander, IBF and WBC unification bout.
So, Khan clearly has a long way to go before he can get to Mayweather ( and remember, as Floyd himself is so fond of saying, all roads lead to Mayweather!), with disaster potentially only a punch away in either fight, the Maidana fight especially. But if Khan does beat the Argentine and then goes on to add the IBF and WBC belts to his collection at 140-pounds, and if Floyd has not been sent to prison for a very long time in the meantime, would the paying fans buy a Mayweather-Khan welterweight match-up?
Right now, as fans have already made clear, the idea of Khan – the man who was blasted out inside a single round by Breidis Prescott a couple of years ago – facing the pound-for-pound best fighter on the planet is a ludicrous one. And it’s true, that even if Khan does go on to achieve all that Golden Boy hopes he can, a Khan-Mayweather fight is a poor second to Pacquiao-Mayweather. But stranger things have happened, and if Khan keeps on winning, he will get the big fight due to his powerful promotional backing (again, he will if Floyd manages to stay out of prison).
Keep in kind also, that Khan is a very fast fighter, arguably possessing faster hands than “Money” himself. And come next September, Floyd will be just five months shy of turning 35-years-of-age. Will the Mayweather greatness have faded a touch by then, enough for the at-his-peak Brit (who will be three months short of turning 25) to be able to pull it off?
It really would be some huge win for Khan if he did beat Mayweather and took away his perfect record. And Khan thinks he has the stuff needed to do it. How about you guys? Will it happen? Will Khan make the fight competitive if it does?