IBF light welterweight champion Zab Judah and WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan meet to unify their titles at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas in a little over a week, and as you would expect both fighters have been busy making the media rounds of late to hype up the fight.
The latest of these was a media conference call on Wednesday, which began with Khan making all the usual responses about how he expects the fight to go down and how his preparations have been going:
“We?re going to be ready. We’ve been watching a lot of tapes to see what he does well and what mistakes he makes.”
“We?ve got a Plan A and a Plan B but to be honest with you, I don?t think hes going to get through Plan A.”
Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach then commented that this is the best shape he has seen Khan in and that despite Judah’s tricks and experience, he has devised the perfect game plan for the young Brit to walk away with both titles on the 23rd.
Things got a little more interesting however when Judah was asked a question by a British journalist, at which point his promoter Kathy Duva took the unusual move of stating that they wouldn’t be answering any questions from British press prior to the fight.
The reason for the bizarre decision as Duva put it was down to the fact that the she and Judah felt disrespected by the financial details agreed upon during the negotiations.
“During negotiations we were told that Zab would not be entitled to any revenue from the UK,” .
“We felt that was insulting because he’s half the equation but were told we’d have to live with that. Zab took the fight with the understanding that Amir would keep all the money from the UK, even though they’re both world champions”
Judah initially demanded an equal purse split, and requested that the fight take place in Atlantic City, neither of which he got, in the end settling for a 45-55% split in Khan’s favor and the venue being the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Whether or not the move was Judah’s idea is unclear, and he later tweeted:
“Its all Golden Boy and Khan fault that I didn’t speak to U.K media but I love you guys any way!!!!”
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Khan clearly wasn’t impressed with Judah and Duva’s stance, saying later to fans:
“I’ll make judah pay for disrespecting the UK fans and media for refusing to do interviews and media work for them. Very childish”
Ironically enough Khan does have a point in that Judah seems to be getting a lot of support from the U.K, and Khan while very popular, isn’t as universally well liked in his homeland as his predecessor Ricky Hatton was.
Judah’s snub of the U.K press also seems an especially strange move since it isn’t as if he is really affecting Khan by not saying anything.
Ernst Wallbaum, Pitt: “Weird move from Judah, if he didn’t like the terms he shouldn’t have accepted the fight, simple as that”
