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.
All we know is Mayweather recently said that Khan’s lack of name value in the United States makes him a non-viable candidate. Khan heard what Mayweather said, but for some reason it didn’t lessen his interest like it would normal fighters.
“Last year I spent months chasing Mayweather,” said Khan said to express.co.uk. “That is absolutely not going to happen again. I will give it until the middle of January and if there are no signs he will come to the negotiation table, then I will look elsewhere.”
It’s kind of funny the way Khan words this, because it makes it seem like he’s the A-side fighter with two world titles in his possession at welterweight rather than Mayweather. Khan doesn’t have a world title at this time, because he lost his two light welterweight titles when he was beaten by Lamont Peterson in 2011. Khan was then knocked out by Danny Garcia in his next fight in 2012. Since then, Khan has faced largely non-punchers and he’s done well.
I think it’s probably safe to say that Mayweather isn’t going to bother fighting Khan in 2015 or ever. Khan could probably save himself time and stress if he were to forget about Mayweather and look to fight one of his adviser Al Haymon’s top fighters like Keith Thurman or Danny Garcia. Khan could probably get a fight against one of them, and that would give him a chance to really prove himself worthy of a fight against Mayweather.
Facing light punchers like Devon Alexander obviously wasn’t the fright move for Khan. That was more of a safe pick for Khan, because Alexander had already been exposed by Shawn Porter and Tim Bradley. All Khan proved against Alexander is that he could beat someone that was beaten a lot worse by Porter and Bradley. Those guys did a better job of beating Alexander than Khan.
