On July 23rd, WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan will face IBF champion Zab Judah at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, and for the second consecutive time his fight won’t be airing on the biggest broadcaster in the UK where the majority of his fan base is located.
The exact reason that Khan vs. Judah will instead air on an obscure pay per view channel instead of Sky Sports isn’t clear, but clearly began prior to Khan’s last fight against Paul McCloskey.
After dropping Khan vs. McCloskey from pay per view, Sky claimed that their reasoning was the inadequate undercard, much of which fell apart due to one reason or another shortly before the fight and admittedly in the end wasn’t packed with big names.
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Khan and team responded to Sky’s announcement that they were being shuffled on the much less prestigious Sky Sports 3 channel by jumping ship altogether and instead airing the fight on pay per view through the little known channel Primetime, achieving around 70,000 sales despite the lack of publicity of public familiarity with the channel.
It was assumed by most at the time that Khan’s next fight would once again air on Sky pay per view, especially given that at the time he was looking into a unification bout with WBC/WBO champion Tim Bradley.
While Paul McCloskey was regarded as a soft defense by many, and the eventual undercard wasn’t as appealing as it could have been, a unification against a fellow champion should surely have been welcomed by Sky with open arms.
Khan claims that Sky apparently weren’t interested.
Unquestionably, a fight between Khan and Tim Bradley could well have turned out to be an ugly affair either bereft of much excitement and action or even worse negatively effected or even ended prematurely by a clash of heads as so many of Bradley’s fights have tended to.
That being said, it would still be a fight that fans would have tuned in to see.
Khan’s status in Britain, Pakistan and the Middle East is such that essentially he could fight whoever he likes and still achieve good pay per view sales and viewing figures. Advertisement
It speaks to the kind of fighter Khan is that he is still pushing for the best opponents available, and with Bradley for the time being not interested, understandably given the absurdly large purse guarantee promised to him by HBO, and the fact that he looks to be soon changing promoter, Khan could have chosen a much lighter touch than Zab Judah.
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Khan’s team are now claiming however that Sky weren’t interested in Judah either, despite the nonsense spouting veteran being a well known name and the fact that he currently holds the IBF title.
On the face of things it appears that Sky are still angry over Khan jumping ship after they had advertised his fight with McClosley.
Khan can counter however that he shouldn’t have been unceremoniously removed from pay per view status in the first place, especially given that other less well known fighters or less compelling matches have been allowed to remain. (David Haye’s pair of shockers against John Ruiz and Audley Harrison being obvious examples)
Khan also has the full backing of Golden Boy, with Richard Schaefer making his feelings on Sky’s treatment of Khan clear to the Telegraph yesterday:
?We are a family. If anyone turns their back on Amir, they turn their back on Golden Boy. Mark my words, England will have the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world within the next 12 to 18 months”
So long as both Sky and Golden Boy stick to their guns on the issue then, it appears that neither side will really benefit from the feud.
Sky have lost potentially the best young British fighter today, along with every other Golden Boy fighter. Khan will sell less pay per views, make less money and receive less exposure.
Harry Jones, Pitt: “Sky and Khan are both wrong, they need to just apologize and admit they need each other, or Khan won’t become as big as he could and Sky will lose viewers because they won’t air the best fights”
