Amir Khan Unification Fight with Bradley Off

By Parvez Fatteh, TMO, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com

Pakistani-British boxer Amir Khan and his camp are moving on after an imposed deadline issued by Golden Boy Promotions to junior welterweight titlist Timothy Bradley Jr. came and went last week. Golden Boy CEO Richard Shaefer said that he had not heard from Gary Shaw, Bradley Jr.’s promoter or anyone in his camp before or after the 1pm deadline on Wednesday.  Khan (25-1, 17 knockouts) and Bradley (27-0, 11 knockouts) were scheduled to meet July 23rd in Las Vegas after Schaefer had worked out a deal with Khan, Shaw and HBO. However, in the end, Bradley chose not to accept Shaw’s offer of a minimum of $1.3 million, which would have been a career-high purse for Bradley.  The failure of this fight to occur is disappointing for several reasons. The hype for this fight had begun even before Khan took on and defeated Paul McCloskey in England last month. But more importantly, the fight would have unified three titles in the light welterweight division, with Khan holding the World Boxing Association (WBA) title, and Bradley holding the World Boxing Council (WBC) and World Boxing Organization (WBO) belts.

For now, the back-up plan for Khan is a group of boxers that include interim lightweight titlist Robert Guerrero, Marcos Maidana (who Khan defeated in a close decision back in December), Erik Morales and International Boxing Federation (IBF) titleholder Zab Judah.  Each candidate is promoted by Golden Boy except Judah, who is with Main Events, which has done several fights with Golden Boy in the past. The logical target from this list would be Zab Judah, who is the IBF light welterweight belt holder. So, with Khan’s WBA belt, it would provide at least some level of unification. Discussions, however, are ongoing.

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