About a month ago, Adrien Broner seemed to be the only name that was not attached to a possible tangle with Amir Khan. Soon after Adrien Broner’s lopsided victory over John Molina Jr. he put forth a challenge to Amir Khan via Instagram and as expected, Khan then accepted that challenge via Twitter and now it has become one of the most talked about matchups in the sport. Such is the power of social media.
Amir Khan trainer Virgil Hunter spoke with Sean Zittel of ThaBoxingVoice about the chances of Khan facing Adrien Broner.
“Yeah sure, of course… Adrien is a tremendous fighter, Mike [Stafford] and I are real good friends and I think that’s a good fight for boxing and I don’t see any reason why it can’t come off at some point in the near future.”
Of course, there are always reasons why a fight cannot be made. In this particular situation, there are probably sticking points with fight location and weights. As of this writing, it was has been confirmed by Adrien Broner himself that he plans on fighting on June 20th in Cincinnati, Ohio. Khan may be fine with the date yet not so keen on fighting on Broner’s home turf.
The issue of weight is also a hurdle. Khan has settled in at welterweight (147) and would not benefit from trying to get down to 140 for one fight and then coming back up for the other. For a fighter like Khan with a suspect chin, he has every reason in the world to avoid screwing around with different weight.
On Broner’s end, he has not had any luck up at 147, suffering his only loss to Maidana up in that weight class. His proper weight is 140 (even though he can’t seem to make it) and like Khan, would benefit from sticking to his proper weight.
I don’t consider either of these to be huge issues, and it’s nice to know that “boxing politics” are not one of the sticking points. If these guys can reach some sort of compromise (maybe a catchweight and a fight in New York?) we would be in for one of the more interesting fights of the year, with the victor (finally) taking that next step toward “elite-status” after having not quite redeemed themselves in the wake of prior setbacks.
