I CAN’T GO OUT LIKE THIS… I HAVE GOT TO FIGHT AGAIN!
Branded a quitter after a low blow leads to sixth-round defeat, but Amir insists…
There were tears welling in his eyes and cries of ‘quitter’ in his ears as Amir Khan refused to accept the curtain had come down on his career the night he was booed off boxing’s grandest stage.
‘I can’t go out like this,’ he said. ‘I must fight again.’ The pain in his groin was real but nothing like as raw as the music he came out to face for refusing to carry on after being struck by a blow as low as the subway running under Madison Square Garden.
The most brutal of all drama critics are the butchers of Broadway and they duly savaged Britain’s challenger for throwing the towel over his bid to unseat Terence Crawford as welterweight champion of the world.
Khan was in several shades of denial. ‘I’ve always been a warrior and I’d rather be knocked out,’ he said. But there was no escaping that he had declined the full five minutes of recovery time that was his due.
Instead, 47 seconds into the sixth round of a fight in which he had already been floored but was fighting back, he and his trainer Virgil hunter signalled that they were retreating from the battlefield.
There had been jeers for Crawford when that vicious left below the belt replayed on the giant screens but the scorn for Khan’s resignation was deafening.
he still clings to a belief that more chances will come to win the third world title he was so desperate to add to his legacy in the early hours of easter Sunday.
Crawford was among many who portrayed him as ‘ looking for a way out of the fight and finding it in a low punch’ and Khan said: ‘It does hurt and upset me to be called a quitter.’
The anguish will be magnified a thousand fold when reality sets in that his long and so often exciting US odyssey has come to a desperately anticlimactic end.
Khan said he will ‘go home with my family to watch the tape and think about what to do next’. he notes that the longawaited domestic fight with Kell Brook, who was at ringside, ‘will still be there’.
Perhaps as a retirement event for both of them? Yet it would not be the blockbuster it might have been, tarnished as it is by their respective losses to the exceptional boxers of a new era. Khan’s journey from teenage heroism on Mount Olympus and on to the peaks of two world lightwelterweight titles has descended into this 32-year- old’s humiliation in America. Those of us who have enjoyed travelling the full distance with him, marvelling at his courage, will grant him the benefit of the doubt when he says: ‘I felt something go in my legs and stomach when that low punch struck. I didn’t know where I was. It was impossible to continue. Peeing blood. The shot was low.’ And although he conceded: ‘I know now why Crawford is rated one of the two best pound-forpound fighters in the world,’ he went on to add: ‘ But he has a reputation for hitting low which may be part of their plan and that wasn’t the first of the night.’ There was no nay- saying the legitimate blows in the opening round which set the tenor of the fight. The first time Crawford made one of his switches from southpaw to orthodox he connected with a crushing left and then a crisp right to that much- discussed Khan chin and sent him crashing to the canvas.
Khan rose unsteadily and somehow clung on until the bell. Far more typically than the sad end to come, he rallied bravely to win at least one round of what became one of his thrillers, for as long as it would last.
A goodly quorum of fans from england, who had boosted this meeting of a Nebraskan champion against a Lancastrian challenger into a hot ticket in an iconic arena not far short of fully packed, roared their approval. Only to slip away later, quietly. There was no talk of a rematch, despite controversy and some confusion over the rightful consequence of that low blow.
Crawford made it clear that Khan had blown his chance, saying: ‘I saw him shaking his head and talking to his trainer and I thought, “Oh no, he’s going to quit”. I don’t like winning that way.’
Crawford will go off in search of title unification fights against the likes of errol Spence Jnr.
The hardest game has moved on in the seven years since Khan last held a world title. Seven years in which he has become more a celebrity, a little less of a prizefighter.
There is no shame in that. The flesh cannot say strong for ever and now the spirit is weakening by degrees.
Khan still professes a love for boxing. he anticipates, optimistically, a championship rematch with Danny Garcia and of finally getting his fists on Manny Pacquiao. But are those fights still there? And does he really want to taper off into lesser fights against lesser lights?
Those are questions to ponder in the bosom of his family.
If he were to make the hardest move of all and walk away, neither we nor history should judge him too harshly. Amir Khan has been about a lot more, most of it admirable, than this one night when Broadway fell dark for him.
The American dream is over. If it’s not over yet, it is almost.