‘The Golden Boy’ Oscar De La Hoya has recently been telling Seconds Out Boxing he believes Amir Khan(30-3, 19KO’s) wants to fight the best in the world, and that the by now he already should have.
Until recently Khan was represented by De La Hoya’s ‘Golden Boy Promotions’ but is now under advisement from the all powerful Al Haymon exclusively, with his immediate family taking a more hands-on role in the direction of his career. DLH feels Khan has been bypassed for some remunerative fights because the administrative team employed by him have proven to be inept, or something more worrying.
“The people behind him, for some reason, I don’t know what they’re feeding him or what they’re telling him, the match-ups they’ve been promising him. It’s a shame because he’s losing so much valuable time. He’s at the peak of his career, he should be fighting the likes of Pacquiao and Mayweather. People have been promising him that forever but it’s not happening.”
It must be made clear that Khan broke ranks from Golden Boy just a few months ago. DLH has only returned to active duty as CEO of his company within the last year, after leaving Richard Schaefer at the helm for an extended period while he addressed some personal issues regarding drugs and alcohol. Schaefer has since been exiled from the company after being accused of actively allowing the contracts of fighters signed to GBP to run out, thus allowing a huge percentage of the company’s talent pool to get siphoned off by the very same Al Haymon that Khan is now signed to.
All this is to say, DLH’s company could have been feeding Khan misinformation in the same manner he feels the new team around him is. Who knows what Khan was being told on a day-to-day basis, especially when such cloak-and-dagger deals were happening behind closed doors within the company at that time. Khan has appeared certain of an imminent showdown with Floyd Mayweather Jr for so long and on so many different occasions that he must be getting told by somebody the fight is just around the next corner, then the next corner, then the next… It could have been going on for ages.
With DLH now running things again, he is looking to grow the company he abandoned for a bit, possibly by attempting to re-recruit some of his wayward stars. He defended Khan in this ongoing situation with fellow Brit and IBF champion Kell Brook(34-0, 23KO’s). The two have been circling one and other for years but Khan has always maintained the fight isn’t big enough yet and that Brook is not on his level. Brook travelled to the States to clearly outpoint Shawn Porter for the title, a man on the crest of a wave of momentum at the time. No easy task, and he’s still undefeated.
The time looks right for them to meet, but Khan is unlikely to take that fight if he’s being told to take an alternative path by everyone around him. In the meantime, it is Khan that takes the flak for the delay.
“Amir Khan would fight Kell Brook, I’m sure he would. He would fight him in a heartbeat but it’s like I said, look, you have a team you have people who protect you, who unfortunately make decisions for you. If that’s what Amir Khan wants, that’s what he has.”
“The most disturbing thing about talking about Khan is that Amir Khan wants to fight the best. He loves fighting the tough challenges. Amir Khan is the fighter; he’s a great fighter and he wants the exposure, he wants to be a superstar. That’s why I admire Amir Khan so much.”
DLH, as his former promoter, looks as though he’s trying to float the idea that things would be going better for Khan if he were back under the “Golden Boy” blanket. It’s difficult to contradict the view that Khan had the most successful and celebrated period of his career while with GBP. During this period, Khan went from British-level talent to a world champion in a matter of a few fights after he left Frank Warren in 2009.
Maybe Khan felt he needed to shake things up after two losses on the spin to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia when he made his decision, a tactic he has employed after almost every significant disappointment in his career, be it with trainers, managers or whoever else. Who knows, If DLH convinces Khan he can deliver a Mayweather or Pacquiao fight after they meet on May 2nd, he could well be heading back to the company that brought him on to the world stage in the first place.
