Amir Khan Passes Floyd Mayweather Audition in Hard-Fought Win vs. Chris Algieri

Chris Algieri seems like a decent enough guy.

He has a college education, looks and sounds good on camera and has handled himself well enough in a boxing ring to have earned a legitimate world championship belt at 140 pounds.

But when it came to Friday night in New York, he was no more than an opening act.

Whether Amir Khan and his team cared to acknowledge it going in or not, the rock-star reality at the Barclays Center was that the Englishman with Pakistani roots entered the venue with far more on the line than a chance to defeat a guy who’d been knocked down six times in his most recent fight.

Julio Cortez/Associated Press

In fact, unless he completely flubbed his star turn, the King would vie for global quarry.

“Boxing needs a young lion,” he said in Spike TV’s pre-fight montage. “I can beat Floyd Mayweather.”

And, to his credit, he went out and backed up the aplomb with achievement.

The 28-year-old boxed smartly, moved effectively and showed enough welterweight moxie over 12 rounds to not only win a justified unanimous decision over a rugged Algieri but also punch his ticket to the 147-pound summit meeting that’s been intermittently dangled for the better part of 15 months.

Indeed, Khan raised his hands after the scores of 115-113, 117-111 and 117-111 were announced and then raised his voice when Premier Boxing Champions' Jimmy Smith posed the predictable “What’s next?”

“I think everyone knows Amir Khan wants to fight Floyd Mayweather,” Khan said.

“I’m the No. 1 contender in the WBC. Mayweather is the champion. Let’s make it happen.”

Lest anyone forget, Khan was the winner of a Mayweather-orchestrated fan poll to pick an opponent in early 2014, but Money chose to deny consensus in favor of a WBA/WBC unification bout with Argentine roughneck Marcos Maidana, who had dethroned would-be protege Adrien Broner.

Khan then took himself out of the running for Mayweather’s subsequent fight in September—which ended up being a Maidana rematch—because he claimed that strict observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan would not allow for a full training camp prior to a late summer fight.

Mayweather called Khan’s name repeatedly at the press conference following his second Maidana win and appeared ready to move toward a May 2015 get-together, but the match was again sidetracked, this time by the detente that finally enabled a “Fight of the Century” with Manny Pacquiao.

John Locher/Associated Press

Provided a post-Pacquiao promise of a September send-off is legit, Khan has just one chance left.

And thanks to Ramadan’s convenient timing for 2015—June 17 to July 17—he’s ready to take it.

“I’ve got good people around me,” Khan told Bleacher Report during fight week.

“I’ve got Al Haymon, who’s advising me and putting me in the right spots and putting me in the right fights and wanting to get me the biggest fights in boxing. That’s what I want.”

Against Algieri, he displayed much of the skill set that could make him a potential Floyd foil.

His sheer athleticism exceeds that of any recent Mayweather foe, and though his power has yet to fold a full-time welterweight, it was stinging enough in spots to dissuade Algieri—and former 147-pound titleholders Luis Collazo and Devon Alexander before him—from considering their own full-on assaults.

As for his biggest perceived weakness—punch resistance—he’s now gone 44 rounds since last hitting the deck (against Julio Diaz) in 2013, and neither Collazo (19 KOs in 36 wins) nor Alexander (14 KOs in 26 wins) was able to land much more than occasionally irritating shots from which he quickly recovered.

Predictably, Algieri, who had knocked out just eight of his 20 professional victims, didn’t do much more. 

Mayweather, incidentally, hasn’t dropped a fully attentive opponent since 2009 and is considered among the pound-for-pound elites thanks to a virtuoso defense, not a violent disposition.

“Floyd has never seen a fighter with that much hand speed, and a guy that’s intelligent in the ring like Amir Khan,” said Spike analyst Antonio Tarver, a former two-division world champion.

“With (trainer) Virgil Hunter in his corner, he’s a threat for anybody.”

And with that as collateral, you can go ahead and put Las Vegas on notice.

The King is ready for his close-up.