Amir Khan has been royally shafted by the king of world boxing.
By anointing Argentina’s Marcos Maidana as his next opponent, Floyd Mayweather has left Khan with a broken promise and a career in need of being fast-tracked back out of limbo.
The Bolton boy was pre-selected as long ago as October to meet Mayweather on May 3 in what would have been the richest fight ever to involve a British boxer.
The process had begun a month earlier, at the Las Vegas weigh-in for Mayweather’s clash with Canelo Alvaraez, with Khan being feted on stage.
Two mornings after Mayweather won that fight in impressive fashion, on an American Airlines flight from Vegas to New York, I sat next to the key executive for his US television broadcasters.
He told me Khan had been ear-marked because he would bring something excitingly different to Floyd Jnr’s unbeaten equation – speed – but that it would be unwise for him to jeopardise the Mayweather jackpot by going through with a world welterweight title challenge to Devon Alexander scheduled for December.
Talks began soon after. So keen was Khan to clinch the fight – and so convinced he could win it - that he told his team to ‘give Mayweather whatever he wants.’
Within weeks the terms had been approved by Mayweather’s leading advisers.
Khan did as he was encouraged and pulled out of the Alexander fight, then signed the contract.
So what went wrong?
After it was detailed on this website that the deal was done in principle, that same TV magnate was quoted as denying he had spoken to MailOnline. I prefer not to believe that.
He has always been truthful with me and those reports came from American journalists irked at being caught off-guard by the revelation, which they sought to discredit.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/article-2567479/
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