Turki Alalshikh turned down Khan v Pacquiao but a new nation is ‘coming in hard’ to make the fight
Despite retiring in 2022, Amir Khan is still itching to get back in the ring, but only if the price is right.
He told Prime Casino all about a recent, mega-money offer made from a secret location that he is unable to reveal at this time.
“Turki would never take that fight. It’s a shame,” the 37-year-old begun. “I don’t think Turki wants to do exhibitions or fights with guys who are retired because he has such a good roster.
“But another nation is coming in hard and wants to throw money at entertainment now. I can’t say their name but if they come in now they’re going to follow the same footprint as Saudi Arabia.
“This one kind of surprised me as well when they said it, and they were ready to throw funds and deposits down, and they’re non-refundable deposits, so you know their team is on it.
“You look at the countries and how much wealth they have, it’s a powerful one. I’m not allowed [to say] but it is another Muslim country. The country that’s backing it is very, very powerful.
“The ball is in Manny’s court if he wants to do it, and I know there’s a lot going on in his life as he’s in politics. It’s just a waiting game. This happens a lot in boxing and then you both end up getting bored of it. When you’ve seen the proof of funds from the country itself, you know that it is real. They’re not messing about.
“The motivation is always going to be there. We’re friends. We’ve fought each other. We’ve trained with each other. At the end of the day we are prize fighters. A prize fighter, with a fight like that on the table, you’re never going to say no because it is a massive, massive fight.
“Maybe it’s a little bit too late but there’s still going to be fireworks because we’ll both have our hearts on our sleeves, and we’ll fight, we’ll fight very hard. It’d be good to do that fight but it just depends.
“Obviously, me and Manny are well-paid fighters and we get paid enough for our previous fights, so we won’t be taking anything less or short-changing ourselves for anyone.”
The money on table would be my third biggest payday ever
“Maybe second or third. Third biggest payday, yeah. But when you’re retired and you’re getting a paycheck like that, it’s a lot of money. We’ve made $12-13 million through fighting so we’ve done well in the sport so to have another paycheck thrown at you again, who would say no to it? Especially when you’re retired. That’s a massive motivation to get back in the ring. And another big motivation is to fight against such a great fighter as Manny Pacquiao, which never happened in the boxing ring when we were both active fighters but it can happen now so why not, yeah?”
