By Edward Chaykovsky
Former world champion Amir Khan (31-4, 19KOs) has continued his pursuit of a potential fight with UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor.
Earlier this year it was Floyd Mayweather Jr. who was talking up the possibility of facing McGregor - but under traditional boxing rules.
Khan is looking to take things one step further - by actually fighting McGregor under MMA rules in the UFC's cage.
Khan, 29-years-old, has been out of the ring since suffering a brutal sixth round knockout at the hands of then WBC middleweight champion Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez in May.
McGregor suffered a shock defeat to Nate Diaz in March. McGregor got revenge on Saturday night when he won a five round majority decision over Diaz at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Khan was an interested observer and sent McGregor a message to call him.
"Amazing fight Conor McGregor. Showed true heart, balls and guts. Well done, have a good rest. See you soon. Call me, we need to talk," Khan wrote on social media.
Khan recently stated that he's not trying to target McGregor to generate press clippings. He wants to test himself in the cage with a world class fighter.
“This isn’t just for publicity, it’s real. Conor has been talking about fighting a boxer. He wanted to fight Floyd Mayweather, but Mayweather didn’t want it. If me and Conor were going to do it, we’d do one boxing and one MMA. It would be a two-fight deal and would definitely work," Khan told Gavin Glicksman of Sun Sport.
“Boxing is my first priority, but big deals have been thrown at me for MMA. I love trying new sports out and maybe there could be something that happens in the future — if the deal is good enough, why not? Conor’s got a big fight ahead of him against Diaz, but let’s see. It would take me six to eight months to prepare. It would be a lot of hard training and I would focus on MMA. I can kick quite hard!”
