Britain's 140 lb King Khan believes Mayweather is running scared of a Pacman fight
Britain's WBA/IBF light welterweight champion Amir Khan believes Floyd Mayweather Jr will always find an excuse to avoid fighting Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao for the title of undisputed pound-for-pound world no.1.
24 year old Khan (26-1, 18 KO's) has been carving a reputation for himself as a potential pound-for-pound king. Much of the incredible progress he has made in the last three years can be put down to his trainer Freddie Roach, and his intense sparring sessions with fellow Roach protege Pacquiao at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles.
Khan believes that the undefeated Mayweather will do anything to avoid a fight with his great friend Pacquiao out of fear of losing his 'O'.
In the past, negotiations between Mayweather, the WBC welterweight champion, and Pacquiao, the WBO title holder have collapsed over blood testing procedure before and after any proposed bout. The Mayweather camp have often stated that Pacquiao's phenomenal rise up the weight classes could only be the result of performance enhancing drugs, and as a result have demanded Olympic standard blood testing.
Initially the Filipino, who has a well known fear of needles, balked at the idea of such intense and stringent testing, but recently team Pacquiao have began to send signals that suggest their man might be willing to agree to Mayweather's demands after all.
However Khan, who plans to move up to 147 lbs in 2012 and has his own ambitions of fighting Mayweather, believes even if Pacquiao did agree 100% with all of Mayweather's drug testing demands, the American would simply find yet another excuse to avoid taking part in the fight the entire world wants to see.
As Khan says in a recent interview with fighthype.com: "The thing is, if Manny says: 'Yeah, I'll fight, let's do the test', then it will be something else. 'Oh, the purse split ain't fair', 'Oh, the gloves', 'Oh, the ring's too small', so I feel there's always an excuse."
He continued: "Mayweather tries to control the situation how he wants it, that's why if the fight with us came to England, he wouldn't like that. There will be no seven-star hotel in Vegas. He's not going to have the luxury of his own mansion, his own gym, so I'd have that advantage. If they leave it any longer, people will get fed up and not care."
Khan, who stopped Zab Judah in seven rounds with a single body shot in July, adding the American's IBF title to his WBA crown, is in hard training for his December title defence in Washington against Lamont Peterson.
The 27-year-old Washington-born Peterson has lost just once in 31 fights, to Khan's only rival at 140 lbs, the undefeated WBC/WBO champion Timothy Bradley in a 2009 title fight. Last December Peterson held future WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz to a draw, and in his last fight he stopped top contender Victor Cayo in the twelfth round.
Peterson believes he has what it takes to take the titles from Khan, and recently said: ''I respect Khan for his accomplishments and as a champion, but this is something that goes beyond all that. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for my entire career, and to win a world title at home is something that I will remember forever. On December 10, I will make my dreams come true and ruin Amir’s plans to reign over his division.''
Dan Hunter is a lifelong boxing aficionado and our Boxing Editor.