Just as the talk of a McGregor / Mayweather super-fight has begun to die down and fade into the past, Bolton boxer and ex-Welterweight champion, Amir Khan, has spoken out saying he’d also love to fight the Irishman.
In a statement, the boxer, who last fought in May against Saul Canelo Alvarez, suffering a round six defeat, said that he would jump at the opportunity to switch careers and have some fun in MMA, reports Flocombat.
With McGregor reigning as the loud mouthed poster boy of the UFC and Khan coming out of his last loss with nothing to lose – the fight would certainly make quite the pretty penny and sounds much more realistic than the prospect of the unbeaten Mayweather fighting ‘The Notorious’.
Khan claims that due to Mayweather’s perfect record, chances are he wouldn’t want to risk a defeat against McGregor just for some extra cash – whereas Khan, with several defeats already, said he would jump at the chance to fight.
In a statement, Khan said:
I would definitely give it a go. It’s something to learn, as well.
I’m at that age where I’m still learning, adapting and getting better. So I still have time under me as well. I’m still a young lad and got loads left in me.
It just depends on the weight category. But look, as a fighter, that’s a fight I would take. McGregor is a massive name in MMA, and I’m a big name in boxing, so globally, I think it would be a massive fight.
Khan, who co-founded Indian MMA promotion Super Fight League (SFL) in 2012, added:
Sometimes, you have to put friendship aside and you have to take it in the cage or in the ring. But yeah, if that fight comes up to me, I’m not one to back away from it.
With MMA, it seems quite easy to make fights that the fans want to see. I was chasing Mayweather for two years, and the fight never happened. The fans wanted to see it, but he didn’t want it. So that’s the difference between MMA and boxing.
Even if I started to train MMA next year, I’d only be 30 years old. I could stop and train for a full year and become a good MMA fighter. It’s in our blood to fight. I’ve been fighting all my life, so for me, I don’t think it’d be a problem for me to learn and switch over to the sport.
Even on Twitter, the fighting pride of Bolton has posted numerous cryptic tweets suggesting the super-fight is in the making:
If Floyd Mayweather won't fight Conor McGregor then @amirkingkhan tells me he would and he'd do it in the UFC.https://t.co/gpKFTvA0Xz
— Chamatkar Sandhu (@SandhuMMA) July 19, 2016
It takes balls. I've never backed away from any fight. Hope some fighters had balls like me too! https://t.co/q29ZwHJjgW
— Amir Khan (@amirkingkhan) July 19, 2016
We can do anything we want to as long as we give it everything we got. pic.twitter.com/Dyz2SoN6NV
— Amir Khan (@amirkingkhan) July 20, 2016