LAS VEGAS: Pakistani-origin British boxer Amir Khan earned $1.5 million for destroying Luis Collazo of the US to claim the welterweight title in Las Vegas on Sunday.
Khan knows that a much bigger payday awaits as he is the most logical choice to be Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s next opponent in September.
Khan is 27 and coming off a spectacular three-knockdown victory against Luis Collazo on the undercard of Mayweather's hard-fought majority decision victory against Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The welterweight from Bolton, England, has a huge fan base in Britain, where he says he can't even train anymore because it's too distracting. Everybody wants a piece of the former junior welterweight champion who at age 17 won, an Olympic silver medal in Athens.
There's just one thing standing in the way of what would be by far the biggest bout of Khan's career, a mega-fight against the world's No. 1 pound-for-pound boxer, Mayweather.
But being Muslim Amir Khan rules out fighting Floyd Mayweather in September because of clash with Ramadan.
A conflict between the schedule of the world’s best boxer and the timing of Ramadan – with its religious obligations for Bolton’s most prominent Muslim – mean the earliest Khan can hope to fight Mayweather is May 2015.
Mayweather has earmarked September 13 for the fight to follow his headlining of this weekend’s bumper bill and Khan explains ‘I can’t be ready for that date. Ramadan doesn’t finish until the end of July and I would need three months in training camp after that to prepare for a fight of this magnitude.
“The earliest I can be back in the ring after my fight here is late October or early November and that will have to be against another opponent”, he added.
