By Edward Chaykovsky
British star Amir Khan (31-3, 19KOs) says the negotiations for his upcoming fight with Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez (46-1-1, 32KOs) was very easy to get done.
Khan moves up by eight pounds to challenge Canelo for the WBC middleweight world title at a catch-weight of 155-pounds.
The fight takes place on May 7th from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. HBO Pay-Per-View will carry the fight in the United States. The UK provider has yet to be established. The fight was officially announced last Tuesday.
Khan and his team have been criticized for being very difficult during negotiations, but he says a deal was wrapped up quite quickly with Canelo.
During the last twelve months, Khan had been unable to secure fights with Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. There were discussions to face IBF champion Kell Brook in summer, but their negotiations dragged out for weeks and fell off the table when Khan decided to go with Canelo.
"[The deal with Canelo] got made smoothly, because I know Oscar for a long, long time and he's always been good to me. I always have to get [my adviser] Al Haymon involved in this, so Al Haymon was involved in the negotiations. Everything went so smooth," Khan said to Steve Bunce of BoxNation.
"That's the thing. My team never makes things hard. We always want things to go smooth, nice and easy, so it happened nice and smooth and it was made within days. [Canelo's promoter] Oscar [De La Hoya of Golden Boy] mentioned [this fight] to me a long time ago and said it would be a 'big, big fight' because we are both 'big, big names.'"
