Fantasy Fight Time-Amir Khan V Maywe6

Evening All.
I wasn't a fan of Amir-I doubt the poor apple has made many fans of this or any other forum.
His career or *legacy*if you must, is surely diminished by his mooning over a defining fight with Floyd that naturally never happened. All of that aside,I wonder if Mayweather was on to something by deciding not to fight him .
Remember that poll that he put to the public, for whom he was going to scrap next?And Khan won,but he said,'Nah.I don't think so.'
Floyd certainly hasn't had every fight easy.Would he be able to deal with the way Khan could stick the jab and move?Or would he be wily and try to lure him in to a macho display of arrogance which has cost him dearly so many times?
Believe it or not ,I have this as a 'pick 'em' because I think Khan was all wrong for him and he knew it.

Easy to laugh at the idea now, but when Mayweather returned from one of his many hiatuses in September 2011, Khan would actually have been a reasonable choice of opponent. Of course, Pacquiao was the fight everyone wanted, and each time Mayweather announced an opponent which wasn't Manny a little part of us all died inside. But Khan had some really good runouts and decent wins against name opponents in the eighteen months beforehand; Malignaggi, Maidana (his best win which actually looked even better with the passing of time) and Judah, for example. He had a decent profile in the States and had unified a couple of titles.

The caveat, of course, was that he was still fighting at 140, with Floyd returning at his by now accustomed 147. To that end, Ortiz was a decent enough comeback fight for Mayweather...But from a styles point of view, and in terms of resume at that point, Khan would certainly have been a much more interesting match-up and was probably more deserving than Ortiz, too. Ortiz never had anything to even push Mayweather out of first gear.

'Twas only a brief window, though. The Peterson 'loss' a few months later was obviously a setback, and soon after came the catastrophe against Garcia. After that, it was quite frankly a joke to think that Mayweather would ever seriously consider Khan as an opponent, and it makes a bit of a mockery of the idea that Khan, a guy struggling with a limited Peterson (though I think he was very unlucky to lose the fight) and then getting splattered by Garcia, was going to beat the greatest boxer of his time.

Sure, Khan was a bit different to a lot of Floyd's other opponents during the last few years of his (proper) career. Had a bit of height on Mayweather, comparable speed, big heart. He certainly wasn't tailor-made for Mayweather in the same way that Marquez, Ortiz or maybe even Guerrero were. But that wouldn't be enough against Mayweather, even if he did extend him a shade more from a styles point of view. Khan still had no inside game, wasn't an adapter and never marshalled his speed into a tight defence - all of these were areas in which Mayweather was a master. Throw in his shaky whiskers and I'm bound to say I can't see a way Khan would ever have won this. Yes, Floyd was a little short on stoppage wins once he moved beyond 140, but then again most of his opponents weren't as brittle-chinned as Khan. If Mayweather can stop Hatton, he can certainly stop Khan.

I could be wrong on this, but I seem to remember that the infamous Twitter poll for Mayweather's next opponent was done somewhere between 2013-2014. By that stage, Khan was well out of the picture and was pretty lucky to be included in the poll at all. He wasn't active enough, wasn't beating good enough names and was more interested in being a celebrity than a fighter, thinking he could talk his way into the mega fights (which he managed to pull off against Canelo, in fairness).

Best case scenario for Khan, I think, would have been mirroring what Judah managed against Mayweather. Out-speed him here and there, give him problems for about four rounds, before being worked out and taken apart stylistically as the fight progressed, and becoming increasingly desperate and forlorn as he can't adapt to an opponent who has adapted to him. He might have gone the distance, but I suspect he'd know he'd been taught a couple of lessons by the time the final bell rang.

Won’t touch Benavidez, won’t touch Andrade, he’s never going to fight anybody is he typical Haymon, 51.05s:

https://youtu.be/qTNxXyBjeeY



*posted on this thread by mistake

No problem, was pleased that the post got past the one comment!
Persuasive insightful comment as ever from Chris,made me feel a nana to say that I gave Khan a shout.I guess if Manny couldn't get near, then it's a stretch to see it.Unless I was pretending to be an idiot just to get a response?You decide. Now
On a tangent.......
I saw this being raised recently-
Gennady Golovkin should be 43-0 but is instead 41-1-1.

Tyson Fury should be 31-0 but is instead 30-0-1.

Manny Pacquiao should be 64-5-2 but is instead 62-7-2.

Canelo Alvarez is 54-1-2 but should be 51-4-1.

And Mayweather certainly has won a couple of fights that could  have gone  either way.Thats why I was sniffy about the word legacy earlier .
Tyson recently said that Floyd's 50 and zero record ,pales when compared to Ray Robinsons two massive streaks which were separated by one loss.
It's a shame that Canelo is so obviously protected by people who want to preserve his record. Sadly the showbiz nonsense we criticise leaks in to the sport very deeply. Is it to pander to the casual fans ,to sell the fights?I think so.There was no way for example that Wilder was going to  lose a points decision in the States.
Being reminded,above, of the Khan  Peterson scrap, I watched it ,and the reffing was just disgraceful. It's always been too easy to bend the rules to suit the point of a narrative for the public.Something has to change but with unearthed evidence of the Kinehan corruption, who can be optimistic of the future. I for one have had my full of the  super fights that we are told are going to be epic and end up just irritating me even more. I'm sorry Canelo is a superb boxer but to me he stands for everything that is wrong about the sport,and if Fury /Joshua happens,my prediction is Fury wins a contentious 12 round decision. Rant over!

Who knows, Derek, it could be me who is totally wrong for writing Khan off so completely. You're certainly not the only one who thought that Mayweather saw something in Khan he didn't like, especially at that late stage of his career where his legs were a bit heavier. I personally don't see it but, as I mentioned above, if Floyd was going to have a bogeyman at that stage it was more likely to be Khan than Ortiz or Guerrero.

With regards to close decisions. For me, Mayweather only ever seriously flirted with defeat once, in the first Castillo fight which was a genuine knife edge kind of fight (not watched it in a long time, but last time I did I had it a draw). I think a lot of the disdain for that verdict comes from the margin of the cards. If Mayweather had got a very tight split decision, 112-114, 115-114, 114-113 or something along those lines, I don't think anyone would have grumbled too much. But unanimously, by margins of four, four and five rounds? Bit of a micky take. There's a case to be made that Mayweather won, (as there is for Castillo), but never by that much - and I think Lederman's HBO card which had Castillo winning by four was way too wide as well.

The only other possible Mayweather fight I think you could consider putting (even remotely) in the contentious bracket was the first Maidana fight. The difference here is that while I don't quite think you can make an argument that Mayweather lost, you could maybe make the argument that he didn't win, either. On the night I remember having it a draw, but happily acknowledged that it was as much to do with the shortcomings of the ten point must system as much as anything else. I thought Mayweather was the better man overall and clearly won six rounds which were pretty much unquestionable. I thought Maidana won maybe four rounds clearly enough. That left a couple of close-ish rounds which I just happened to give to Maidana, not because I was looking to give him rounds, but because that's just how I honestly saw it at that time. So even scoring it a draw, I knew that I was being as kind as I could realistically be to Maidana, and that it was a fight which couldn't go his way outright, but maybe could be split between them. But overall I don't think Mayweather winning was controversial in any way.

It wasn't one of Mayweather's better performances by any means, and I think him granting the immediate rematch was in part an admission that he had, uncharacteristically, let an opponent get a bit closer to him than we'd all been accustomed to. Either way, in the cases of both Castillo and Maidana, Mayweather rematched them both in his very next outing and both times beat them more convincingly, which cuts him a bit of slack. Aside from that, I've never bought into the idea that the De La Hoya or Pacquiao fights were particularly close, and I think Floyd won them both clearly.

As for Fury....I don't think the first Wilder fight was a robbery by any stretch. I'd put it in the same category as the first Marquez-Pacquiao fight. A draw was kinder to one guy (Pacquiao / Wilder) than the other, and you can't make a case that they won. But again you could make a case that they didn't lose outright either. In both cases, guys who were on top for roughly two-thirds of the fight had to be content with a draw, and could count themselves a little unlucky...But you can't just pretend that the knockdowns didn't happen. I'm comfortable giving Wilder the first two rounds, and of course he then had two 10-8s in rounds nine and twelve. That means you only need to give him one of the other rounds to square it up as a draw, which I actually did when I re-watched it. I think everyone agrees that one round of those remaining seven might be the best you can do for him, and Fury did outbox him for the most part. But quite a few of those rounds were low-key and a couple were close, hence it's perfectly reasonable to give Wilder a share of the spoils for me, even if that's probably the best you can manage for him.

And hey, Fury himself got away with a contentious one early in his career against McDermott, so no need to feel too sorry for him having that slight blemish on his record.

Derek Smalls wrote:
I saw this being raised recently-
Gennady Golovkin should be 43-0 but is instead 41-1-1.

Tyson Fury should be 31-0 but is instead 30-0-1.

Manny Pacquiao should be 64-5-2 but is instead 62-7-2.

Canelo Alvarez is 54-1-2 but should be 51-4-1.

And Mayweather certainly has won a couple of fights that could  have gone  either way.

That's a slightly one eyed way of looking at thing with respect to Pacquiao and Fury, it's purely taking into the decisions they didn't get but not the ones they did. Taking into account the knockdowns I felt a draw was a fair result in the first Wilder fight, he was outboxing him but that's still a lot of ground to make up. Intrigued to know which other defeat Pacquiao deserved other than Tim Bradley? There's also the fact he was very fortunate to get victories over Marquez when he should have lost at least two of them. The only fight Alvarez lost beyond doubt was the first Golovkin fight, the second a draw again seems fair but the Trout, Cotto and Lara fights he deserved to win.

With regards to Mayweather the first Castillo fight you'd have to edge against him but aside from that he won 49 without much doubt, there is no way De La Hoya came close to beating him.

Wow, well my score for the first Wilder Fury didn't have the opening two rounds for Wilder at all.I did bet on Fury and it's hard to keep objective though under that circumstance.
Soul, I should have prefaced that I had copied the quote about the three boxers' records from elsewhere-I should have put the quote in parentheses-however ,Yes, I was referring to the De La Hoya fight.How much do you give it to Floyd by? I guess that I will watch it on YouTube ,again, WITHOUT any biased headline nonsense.But I can't comment about the Pacquiao record because I honestly don't know too much about it. However, doing a bit of online mooching last night I did consider adding Marquez to the thread of Most Underated boxers of the last 40 years. As you state he seems to have been robbed by Manny more than once and also produced one of the most definitive knockouts in the last 40 years.

116-112 to Mayweather with very little flexibility in the scoring if i'm honest, there are no more than four rounds you can give De La Hoya, from memory 2, 3, 4 and 12. It's not a fight i've revisited very often.

Think the problem with that fight is that (from memory because I only watched it once) a lot of the rounds could have been scored 10-10 as there was a fair few rounds where De La Hoya stalked Mayweather to little effect and where Mayweather wasn't really required to do anything. De La Hoya faded badly from the 9th onwards (with the exception of the last where he knew he had to do something) and rounds 9, 10 and 11 tip the balance in Mayweather's favour.

It's nothing like the Trinidad fight where Oscar fairly dominated the first 8 rounds then coasted home to lose the last 4 and then got stung by the scoring.

"Canelo Alvarez is 54-1-2 but should be 51-4-1".

Using that comment to veer off topic but I hate Canelo quite a lot.

Watched the Caenlo/Kovalev fight recently and was appalled at how bad Kovalev was. He fought like a 6th former scared of the toughest kid in the local primary. I wonder about that fight and whether it was a fix. It wouldn't surprise me with the special treatment the ginger Mexican seems to enjoy. Also, Kovalev was well rewarded for his "efforts", I think about $12m.

Mochyn du wrote:"Canelo Alvarez is 54-1-2 but should be 51-4-1".

Using that comment to veer off topic but I hate Canelo quite a lot.  

Watched the Caenlo/Kovalev fight recently and was appalled at how bad Kovalev was.  He fought like a 6th former scared of the toughest kid in the local primary.  I wonder about that fight and whether it was a fix.   It wouldn't surprise me with the special treatment the ginger Mexican seems to enjoy.   Also, Kovalev was well rewarded for his "efforts", I think about $12m.

I am hardly Alvarez' biggest fan but I think there's two simple factors here: 1) Kovalev is shot - he isn't the fighter he once was and has had legal issues distracting him outside of the ring. 2) He simply wanted the payday. He couldn't win - if he did well enough to "win" on points he might have got a narrow loss on the scorecards given the "one judge in my pocket" past of Alvarez. He'd have had to knock Alvarez out, something nobody has come close to doing.

Don't get me wrong I liked Kovalev as a fighter, but this was a definite case of take the loss, pay the bills.

Note that Alvarez didn't go for Bivol or Beterbiev. Careful matchmaking there!

I'm pretty much in line with Superfly on the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight. Not much in it after eight, but Oscar faded in the final stretch, which was a recurring fault of his once he'd moved beyond Light-Welter, and Mayweather in fairness did raise his game and start tattooing him with jabs and counters. The only round you could possibly give De La Hoya after that stage was the twelfth, and even then it was hardly clear cut. Mayweather by a solid 3-4 points for me.

That said, it wasn't a great performance by Mayweather's standards and I, like a lot of others, was surprised at the time that he didn't beat a still decent, but also clearly faded De La Hoya a little more convincingly at that stage of their careers. To a lot of relatively new fight fans in the UK at that stage (due to the Hatton factor) that was their first real glimpse of Mayweather, and may help explain why a lot of Brits anticipated a much more competitive fight between him and Hatton later that year. Have to admit I thought so, too.