The Hottest Boxing Storylines for the Week of December 15

How good was Amir Khan on Saturday night?

The 28-year-old from Bolton made easy work of former world champion Devon Alexander, winning every round in a career-best performance on boxing's biggest stage. 

His hand speed and movement were dizzying, and it raised one suddenly huge question:

Does he have the style to beat Floyd Mayweather?

We tackle that one right out of the gate.

We'll also look at a pair of other prime-time welterweights who were in action on Saturday.

Did Timothy Bradley get jobbed?

And was there something off with Keith Thurman?

Then we set our sights to the coming weeks and take a look at the latest in the Cotto vs. Canelo negotiations and Adonis Stevenson's fight this coming weekend.

Let's get right to it.

These are the hottest boxing storylines for the week.

Can Amir Khan Beat Floyd Mayweather?

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That’s the big question, isn’t it?

Khan was absolutely dominant against Alexander, a top-10 welterweight and two-time world champion, displaying blazing hand speed and an increased boxing IQ under the tutelage of trainer Virgil Hunter.

He didn’t waste any movement or take unnecessary risks, throwing his punches with conviction and using his foot movement to get out before Alexander could respond.

Khan now jumps to the front of the line as the favorite to land the next shot at pound-for-pound king Mayweather, and you have to wonder if that fight has a little more zing to it now than it did earlier in the year.

It’s extremely rare, perhaps unheard of, to say that Mayweather would enter a fight without a substantial edge in hand and foot speed.

That would most certainly be the case against Khan, who has the fastest hands in the sport by a fairly wide margin.

Styles make fights, and Khan has been saying for a while now that his is built to give a fighter like Mayweather fits.

So much so, that Bleacher Report’s Lyle Fitzsimmons now considers him more threatening to Mayweather than Manny Pacquiao, and, controversial as it may sound, he's right on the mark.

Floyd focuses so much on winning rounds. He’s content to potshot you from the outside, keep you at distance and frustrate you with his speed and precision.

But would that work against a fighter who can not only equal but trump him in hand speed?

It’s an excellent question, and one that might now be worth answering.

Did Karma Bite Timothy Bradley?

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The judges giveth and the judges taketh away.

Bradley was the second victim of shoddy officiating on Saturday night at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, joining Mauricio Herrera in the line of fighters who had clear victory stolen by horrendous scorecards.

When Michael Buffer announced a draw as the official verdict in Bradley’s grinding should’ve-been-win over Diego Chaves, you couldn’t help but flash back to the scene a few blocks up the street when Desert Storm got a gift win over Pacquiao in 2012.

You may choose to view it as karma evening the score, and at least Bradley didn’t get a loss, but It’s really difficult to understand how Julie Lederman could find eight rounds for the rugged but limited Argentine.

Lederman, one of the best judges in the business, rarely, if ever, finds herself the center of any controversy. Her scorecards are usually right on the mark, but this was a terrible night for her. Even her father, legendary on-air judge Harold Lederman, scored the bout for Bradley 116-112.

Compubox, not always accurate but good at painting a general picture, saw Bradley and Chaves throw almost the exact same number of punches, but Bradley landed 73 more over the course of 12 rounds.

It was a tough, grind-it-out type of fight for the former multi-weight world champion who landed his right hand at will, but he did more than enough to secure victory.

Ringside media overwhelmingly favored him on their scorecards, including ESPN.com’s Dan Rafael, who scored the contest 119-109 for Bradley.

Post-fight, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, who promotes Bradley, was peeved over the scoring and said he’d do a rematch, but that’s a waste.

Bradley is one of the top five pound-for-pound fighters in the sport, and he should be moving forward to bigger and better things.

Not rematching a guy he clearly beat the first time.

Was Something Wrong with Keith Thurman?

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Thurman was expected to be the breakout star of Saturday night’s action, facing an undefeated but little-known opponent with very little punching power.

Things got off to a promising start in the opening frame when a One Time left hook deposited Leonard Bundu on the canvas, but that was the literal lone exciting moment of the fight.

Thurman immediately backed off, content to backpedal and potshot his foe for the majority of the next 11 rounds and change.

Effective?

Yes.

Crowd pleasing?

Not in the slightest.

Some of that can be attributed to Bundu’s highly defensive, awkward style.

The Italian-based fighter, who is originally from Sierra Leone, feinted like it was going out of style and switched stances more often than he threw punches.

Still, Thurman, a vaunted power puncher, did nothing to really attack his foe, drawing the ire of a crowd that booed lustily over large segments of the fight.

It almost seemed as though something was off with Thurman, who was back in the ring for the first time since April after nursing a left shoulder injury.

He seemed OK with his performance, speaking to Showtime’s Jim Grey over the heavy boos of the crowd at the MGM Grand.

But the booing seemed to rattle him, leading him to fire off, per ESPN:

“This is the sport of boxing. I pick how I want to fight.”

Yes, but the fans, who pay their money, earn the right to tell you when they feel you stunk.

It could’ve been the layoff, the awkwardness of his foe or some other issues, but Thurman disappointed on Saturday night, and that’s just not like him.

Hopefully it’s just a hiccup, because this kid has the goods to be a huge star going forward.

He’s earned a mulligan, and he seemed to understand that, promising the crowd bigger and better performances in the future.

We're with you on that, One Time.

Are We Close to Cotto vs. Canelo?

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Lem Satterfield of The Ring Magazine reported last week that Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez had agreed to terms for a huge pay-per-view clash next spring against middleweight champion Miguel Cotto.

The news is certainly welcome for fight fans who are eagerly anticipating the Mexico vs. Puerto Rico matchup on Cinco de Mayo weekend, but it doesn’t mean, as some outlets are reporting, that the fight is a done deal.

Closer?

Yes.

Done?

Not just yet.

Cotto and his team still must agree to terms for the fight, which would be broadcast May 2 on HBO PPV, with Las Vegas, Dallas and San Antonio as possible destinations.

Top Rank President Todd duBoef is handling negotiations, but Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya seemed optimistic that a deal would be brokered sooner than later.

He told Satterfield:

"

So the venue still is open as to where we’re going to bring it, but first things first, and that’s that we have agreed on some major points, which is a huge step in the right direction. So I have no doubt in my mind that Canelo and Cotto will be fighting on Cinco De Mayo, and we’re moving in the right direction.

"

Should the fight come off, it would be the first huge PPV main event put together by De La Hoya and his former promoter/longtime promotional rival Bob Arum since the end of boxing’s cold war.

We await official word.

Has Adonis Stevenson Become Irrelevant?

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What else can we say about Adonis Stevenson?

Big fights are happening all over the light-heavyweight division, but the lineal and WBC champion has nothing to do with any of them.

He’s completely marginalized.

Things haven’t gone as planned since Stevenson signed with Al Haymon and jumped from HBO to Showtime.

The move effectively killed, at least for the time being, a showdown with Sergey Kovalev that the HBO people thought was a done deal for this past fall. It was widely expected that Stevenson would pursue a fight with Bernard Hopkins, but the ageless wonder grew tired of waiting and returned to HBO to face Kovalev himself.

And now Jean Pascal, who was a logical opponent for Stevenson in a huge all-Montreal clash, is also on his way to HBO to challenge Kovalev as well.

Kovalev, who has accumulated three-fourths of the 175-pound crown, is going to start haunting Stevenson’s dreams like a bad Freddy Krueger sequel.

He’s been the big winner of this year’s light-heavyweight drama, while Stevenson, who faces unknown Russian Dmitry Sukhotsky on Saturday night, waits out in the cold, no big fights on the horizon.

And he has himself to blame.

Greg Leon, CEO of Jean Pascal Promotions, made it very clear in comments to Rick Reeno of Boxingscene.com that dealing with Stevenson was highly difficult, referring to him as a vulgar slang term for a part of the female anatomy and accusing him of ducking fights.

Ouch.