By Luke Furman
Amir Khan (30-3, 19KOs) feels he's done enough to earn his position to challenge WBC/WBA welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (47-0, 26KOs) in 2015. Khan is coming off a one-sided decision twelve round decision win over two-division champion Devon Alexander.
Khan points to his victory over Marcos Maidana, from 2010, where he dropped the Argentine boxer in the first and outboxed him in several other rounds in the contest. The fight wasn't as easy as Khan makes it sound. He found himself in serious trouble in the championship rounds when Maidana caught him on the chin, but he weathered Maidana's late rally to win a unanimous decision.
Maidana gave Mayweather two tough twelve round fights in 2014. Alexander, who Khan just beat, had dominated Maidana in 2012 over ten.
"Maidana was a fight where everybody said 'Amir is going to lose the fight.' I had everyone against me. They said 'he's going to get beat.' It wasn't bringing me down morally. I just had to prove something to people, prove everyone wrong. It's sometimes good to be the underdog because you get to prove everyone wrong. I went in there and beat this guy quite easily, by knocking him down and made him look silly," Khan told Pakistan Today.
"I won that fight and the last fight against Devon Alexander, a lot of people thought I was going to lose against him, because he's a three time world champion and I'm a two time world champion. But we looked so good against him and beat him punch perfect."
Khan's commentary might be a direct reaction to Maidana's recent blast on Twitter. Maidana erupted after Khan used his name in several interviews when discussing a potential fight with Mayweather.
Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.
