Jon Vale: Dim King Khan continues self-destruction
In the aftermath of Amir Khan's unsurprisingly one-sided world title defence against Paul McCloskey, one thing emerges abundantly clear: the shambolic build-up to the fight will prove to be a far more damaging blow to the young world champion than anything McCloskey managed to inflict upon him on Saturday night, with Khan’s reputation in Britain plummeting once again to lows not seen since his mauling at the hands of Breidis Prescott.
Khan has never been overly-popular here in the UK. Social scientists will point to Khan's standing as a successful British Muslim, a rare commodity that doesn't appeal to a nation where the BNP is a relatively well-supported party. Others may argue that Khan doesn't fit the stereotypical British 'fighter', with our blood-hungry punters much preferring a hard-headed warhorse rather than the slick, fast fighter that Khan undoubtedly is.
Or maybe it's our obsession with the underdog; we Brits love a hard luck story, yet Khan is a man blessed with real, natural talent. He's good, basically, and we don't like that. But socially-fuelled excuses are not applicable to this situation. Khan's drop in popularity is a direct result of some misguided decisions he and his team made prior to his return to England for the first time since 2009, with an unspectacular performance on Saturday night rounding off a thoroughly disappointing comeback to these shores.
The trouble began with the sacking of conditioning coach Alex Ariza. Ariza is the man credited with making Manny Pacquiao the fighter he is today, and still works with the world's best pound-for-pound fighter as well as the large majority of all Freddie Roach's other world-ranked contenders. Yet Khan thought he knew best, and got rid of the man largely responsible for constructing the steady legs that allowed him to survive that epic war with Marcos Maidana, with contractual and financial disputes rumoured to be the reasons behind the split.
No matter what has happened behind the scenes though, Alex Ariza remains the best conditioning coach in the game. He rebuilt Amir Kahn's body after that devastating Prescott loss, and along with Freddie Roach has transformed Khan from gifted hopeful into genuine world-class fighter. To then dismiss Ariza based on petty financial arguments shows some severe short-sightedness from Khan; whether this rash thinking comes back to haunt him in the long run remains to be seen.
Then there came the promotion debacle. The fallout between Sky Sports and Khan Promotions has been much publicised, with Khan Promotions' inability to supply a decent undercard forcing our biggest sports broadcaster to stop their planned pay-per-view show. Khan hit back by saying this showed a lack of support from Sky Sports, moved the broadcast to Primetime, and the whole thing ended up being a bit of a non-eventful mess.
Paul McCloskey's promoter Eddie Hearn described the whole thing as 'commercial suicide' for Khan, and it's very hard to disagree. Khan made significant strides in the popularity stakes with his battling victory over Maidana last December, and had a massive opportunity to further endear himself to the British public on his return to these shores. Exposure was all he needed this time around, with the big money likely to come from the megafights in America he's bound to enjoy in the coming years.
Yet with more incredible short-sightedness, he and his team decided that pay-per-view was the only way to go. You can't blame Sky Sports for this. What they had here was a world champion going in with a European champion; the last time that happened, Audley Harrison got knocked out in three rounds by David Haye. They needed assurances that the supporting cast would excite the crowd, offer something else worth watching if the main event proved only to be a mismatch, which ultimately it did.
While the names of Matthew Macklin and Tyson Fury were mentioned, the actual undercard of a tune-up for Rendall Munroe and a British welterweight title fight just didn't cut the mustard. The thing is, any undercard in this country should be stocked full of top-class talent. British boxing has never had so many intriguing plotlines to excite the paying public: the Olympians of 2008 continue to mature; there are six or seven decent heavyweights at domestic level, and there are a whole host of Britons in and around the mix for a world title shot.
Someone like exciting welterweight Kell Brook, ranked number one contender by the WBO, had recently moved to Eddie Hearn's stable of fighters and would have provided ideal support to the main event. Yet this wasn't an idea the collaborative efforts of three promotional outfits could come up with, which sums up the general inadequacy seen throughout the fight's promotion.
The organisation of the whole event was, quite frankly, disorganised. Golden Boy Promotions, Hatton Promotions and Khan Promotions were all involved in some way, yet as to who was in charge remains totally unclear. What is clear though, is that it was Team Khan that took the decision to go to Primetime.
Team Khan is run by Amir Khan's family. Not experienced promoters, not even naive independent third parties, but Khan's family. To put it bluntly, they don't know what they're doing. Their sole objective is to look after Amir Khan, ensure he gets the biggest, juiciest slice of the monetary pie and hope that the rest of it kind of falls into place; this kind of attitude isn't going to deliver a bumper night of boxing.
Britain's biggest promoter Frank Warren wrote in The Sun this week: "When boxers promote themselves they cut corners, try and save every penny they can to boost their end of the cut. It's understandable, but it does nothing for the development of future stars and short changes the public."
To date, there has not been a really successful example of a fighter's own promotion team putting on a good night's entertainment. Unless the evening's main event is a blockbuster, an intriguing support cast is a must to justify any pay-per-view status. Frank Warren's latest tactic of putting Britain's brightest prospects together on one card has to be the way to go for all our country's promoters, if they're going to keep asking our recession-hit public to continue forking out £15 a time to watch their boxing.
Amir Khan and his shoddy promotion team would have done well to realise this.
Date published :
18 Apr 2011 - 12:16:06
