Fresh off a harrowing knockout defeat to 'Canelo' Alvarez in Las Vegas, Amir Khan said to HBO what the entire boxing world has felt for some time.
Golovkin, Canelo and Bullshit
Khan's conqueror, the 25-year-old Mexican icon Canelo Alvarez, is considered by many to be the lineal middleweight champion of the world since dethroning Miguel Cotto late last year.
Since that victory, Canelo has been inextricably and linked to the man most boxing purists deem the real, real World middleweight champion, and current WBA and IBF beltholder, Gennady 'GGG' Golovkin. Instead of face Golovkin, he defended the title at a 155-pound catchweight vs Khan (royally pissing off those who believe middleweight is middleweight: 160 pounds), in what always struck as an entertaining but one-sided contest on paper.
To put Gennady Golovkin's dominance over the middleweight division into context - Steve Bunce recently pointed out the following: Golovkin has held at least one version of the middleweight championship since 2010. He was won 17 consecutive world title fights, all of them finishing inside the distance. Since he first picked up a world belt, 18 other men have won a version of the world title. Only two of these men have fought Golovkin.
The Kazakh sensation will fight just about anybody at any weight, but it's not necessarily in his nature to 'call out' other fighters, and frankly, other fighters sure as shit don't want to call out Triple G. It ain't difficult to see why:
The one fight boxing fans want to see more than any other is Golovkin vs Canelo, but thus far the fire-haired Mexican's team has been reluctant to get their man in the ring with the Beast from the East, maintaining that, despite being World middleweight champion, Canelo operates better at 155-pounds (now known in boxing as Caneloweight: a pound heavier than light-middleweight).
This, of course, is a nonsense. Canelo walked into the ring for his clash with Khan weighing 172 pounds. When Gennady Golovkin destroyed the previously undefeated Dominic Wade two weekends ago, he weighed...172 pounds.
Jim Lampley put this to the ringside Golovkin on HBO's Canelo - Khan broadcast last night, and the ever-amicable Kazakh shrugged it off before once more ominously declaring that 'he wants his belt' (indeed, he has referred to Canelo in this manner with such frequency that, in recent weeks, people have been approaching him on the streets and handing him their belts).
The bottom line is that boxing needs this fight to generate mainstream interest after the anticlimax that was May-Pac 12 months ago. It needs this fight to discover whether Golovkin belongs in the pantheon of all-time middleweight greats, or if Canelo is truly the global superstar that Mexico and Golden Boy portray him to be. Or, as is quite plausible considering their personalities and talents, if both men are two legitimate icons in a sport glaringly devoid of them.
And only bullshit by way of boxing ABCs and Canelo's management team is keeping them apart.
Khan's Cojones
And that's why Amir Khan's post-fight interview from last night should have been admired, and not admonished, by fans of the sport.
Speaking to Max Kellerman not moments after having his facial features rearranged by his larger opponent, Khan decided that he'd had enough of the red tape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n33xF1GicY
His trainer Virgil Hunter was even more vehement that Canelo should 'show his balls' and trade leather with GGG; the pair went out on a limb and spoke for the entire boxing world on arguably its biggest platform, with little to gain for themselves.
Canelo is a goddamn beast; a supremely-skilled, concrete-fisted bear from Guadalajara who has dealt with far larger and more dangerous opponents than Khan in the past two years. There's not a hope in hell he 'fears' Golovkin. But Khan and Hunter were quite correct: it's time for him to make it his business to get his once-in-a-generation, legacy-defining bout over the line. No more wishy-washy garbage about catchweights and Golovkin needing to 'earn the fight'. No more bullshit.
And, to Canelo's credit, he didn't mince his words during his own post-fight interview with Kellerman, quite conspicuously stung by much of the criticism levelled at him throughout the boxing world over the past 18 months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQfI1jwnHW8
Like we say Mexico - we don't fuck around! I'll fight him now!
Boxing will now hold him to his word as it feverishly anticipates one of the potential fights of the decade.
And yes, some responsibility, too, falls on Golovkin himself. The baddest man on the planet is one of the nicest guys in combat sports, but the time has come for him to start ruffling a few feathers until he gets Canelo into the ring. If the UFC has thought boxing anything, it's that viral status and sensationalised quotes - along with carefully constructed video highlights packages - amount to crossover status and, in turn, power.
Like him or lump him, one thing Amir Khan has never lacked is balls; he threw down with Canelo in a frankly quixotic challenge, and it took considerable cojones to make the statement he did not minutes after having his skull distorted by a nuclear right hand.
His interview polarised opinion, particularly in America where it was met with much ridicule in the soulless pit of post-fight Twitter, and where many scribes and pundits - including HBO's Kellerman - questioned as to why it was so important to Khan that Canelo pit his wits against the monstrous Golovkin.
Erm, could it simply be that Khan, like the rest of us, wants to see the best fight the best? Could it be that a man who has boxed at the highest level for the past 12 years has a vested interest in his chosen profession, and may even be a fan of the sweet science as well as a pugilist?
Boxing needs more fighters to throw down the gauntlet when rabid fan demands are seemingly not enough, and that's why Khan did his part to change the game last night. If his comments transpire to become the straw which broke the camel's back, and we finally see a World middleweight title fight for the ages, the sport will be all the better for it.
