From the beginning, WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan’s upcoming defense against Paul McCloskey has been facing problems.
So much so in fact that the validity of Khan even staging bouts in the U.K in the near future is, under the current circumstances, being called into question
The simple reason why Khan continues to fight in the U.K rather than staging all his fights in the United States is that he still wants to develop his home fan base.
While Khan is a popular fighter by most standards, and has apparently sold around 15,000 tickets to his upcoming bout with Paul McCloskey at the Manchester Evening News arena, there is still room for improvement.
Britain’s last light welterweight champion Ricky Hatton had one of the largest and most dedicated fan bases in the sport, to the extent that some reports put the figure of those traveling to Las Vegas for his bout against Floyd Mayweather at 20,000.
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Hatton weigh-ins regularly sounded more like a soccer match than a boxing event and the vast majority of his fans who traveled knew ahead of time that they wouldn’t even be seeing their idol in the flesh due to the fact that tickets allocated to him had sold out months beforehand.
Khan’s entire career since winning the Olympic silver medal at the Athens games in 2004 has been televised in the U.K and while he boasts one of the biggest followings in the country, he still isn’t the star that his predecessor was.
By fighting at home against well known U.K fighters in between higher profile bouts in the U.S Khan’s team are obviously hoping that over time they too can build the same kind of rabid fan base that Hatton had.
The recent debacle with Sky sports may have them rethinking this strategy.
After poor initial sales of Khan’s Sky sports pay per view bout with undefeated European champion Paul McCloskey, thanks in part to several undercard bouts falling through at short notice, Sky pulled the plug, relegating the event to Sky Sports 3. Advertisement
Khan’s team then rejected the offer, moving the bout to Primetime, a little known pay per view channel who have handled fights on occasion in the past.
The end result likely being slightly more money for Khan, who was facing fighting for just 100k for a Sky sports 3 appearance instead of the million plus a Sky pay per view would have brought in.
But with that a potentially damaged relationship with Sky Sports and only a tiny fraction of the fans that would have seen the bout on Sky Sports 3 now watching the event.
Photos: Amir Khan, Ricky Hatton promoting april 16th event
Khan’s detractors will no doubt claim that he’s chasing the money and doesn’t care about the fans.
Fighting in the U.K in the first place is an attempt by Khan and team to maintain and enlarge his fan base.
The fact that the undercard fell to pieces can’t be blamed on either Khan or Sky Sports.
The fact that Khan wasn’t keen on fighting for less than a tenth of the purse he was set to make is hardly anything he can be faulted for either.
Hopefully Khan can repair his relationship with Sky and continue to fight on pay per view events for them in the future.
If not paltry purses and little exposure could see Khan sticking to the United States from now on.
Darrell Smith, Pitt: “Khan needs to get involved and take charge of what his team is doing, first the Ariza stuff and now they’re burning bridges with the only network in the U.K who carry boxing regularly”
Eddie Barry, Bolton: “Amir will always be popular here but he doesn’t have the same kind of charisma that Ricky had. This isn’t going to help”
