By Steve Kim
It's been a long and winding road but Amir Khan (31-3, 19KOs) finally has his big fight, as he faces WBC middleweight belt-holder Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez (46-1-1, 32KOs) on May 7th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Khan's career for the past two years was bogged down as he unsuccessfully chased fights against Floyd Mayweather and then Manny Pacquiao.
Khan said during an appearance on 'the 3 Knockdown Rule' with Mario Lopez that he believed he had landed a fight with Mayweather more than once.
"There were contracts sent back and forth from my team and Floyd Mayweather's team and before you started to say,'OK, I'm going to pick who I should fight,' he put on social media poll one time and I won the social media poll and then he still went with (Marcos) Maidana and even before Maidana there was talks of me fighting Mayweather again. The contract was done, everything was in black and white and whenever it came time to announce the fight with me - it wasn't."
Instead of facing Khan, Mayweather faced Maidana twice in 2014, then Manny Pacquiao and Andre Berto the following year, while Khan's career basically stagnated.
He admitted - "It did really upset me and that's why when it came to this fight, making the 'Canelo' fight I made sure it didn't leak one bit because I didn't want to get my hopes high. God forbid it just didn't happen. For example, the Manny Pacquiao fight before the 'Canelo' fight talks were happening, we were talking to Manny, his team, Mike Koncz and to Bob Arum.
"Bob Arum flew to London to meet my team. That fight was done, same again. But it's just a shame that I couldn't get these big fights and it's a great opportunity and I just want to thank 'Canelo' and his team for giving me this opportunity because it's been my dream to be in a big fight like this."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
