By Edward Chaykovsky
Amir "King" Khan (31-3, 19KOs) believes Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26KOs) made a serious mistake when he passed him over in favor of a fight with Andre Berto last month.
Mayweather, in what was claimed to have been his final career fight, won a twelve round unanimous decision over Berto on September 12th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
To be fair, the decision to select Berto shocked everyone. Almost every insider expected Mayweather to pick Khan, who brings a lot more money to the table and is viewed as a more competitive fight.
Berto, who was 3-3 in his six fights, was as massive underdog in the contest. Some betting outfits had him listed as high as an 80-1 underdog. The fight played out as expected, with Mayweather dominating most of the action for an easy decision win.
Khan views the move to pick Berto as nothing more than a swerve to avoid their match. The selection didn't help add insult to injury, as Berto shares the same trainer as Khan and the two fighters prepare at the same gym, operated by veteran coach Virgil Hunter in Bay Area of California.
The Showtime Pay-Per-View generated great numbers for a normal fighter, but nothing close to what Mayweather generates on a regular basis. Some believe it brought in less than 500K pay-per-view purchases and gave him his lowest buyrate number in almost a decade.
“The fight not happening for me suggests that he thought I could beat him. If you look at his last fight against Andre Berto, the PPV buys Stateside were very, very bad. The fight performed really poorly financially because nobody was interested. Had he fought me, it would have done much better than it did," Khan told Yahoo Sports.
“For someone like Mayweather, who boasts about how much he loves to make tons of money, to be happy to make a lot less against Berto in September than against me later in the year tells me that he was only interesting in staying unbeaten at all costs, even if some of his fights were not interesting.
“I’m a bigger name than Berto, I’ve fought better opponents than Berto and I’ve fought on a higher level than Berto. Floyd picking the lesser fight and missing out on extra money says it all, really. Mayweather leaves this sport unbeaten, but honestly, that’s because he didn’t take some risky fights along the way. He is very, very smart and knows who to pick and when to pick for his opponents.”
