Steve Farhood: “I see frustration on the part of Amir Khan. To me, Canelo Alvarez seems like a very strange fight for him to take”

Showtime boxing commentator, Steve Farhood has been covering the sport for almost 40 years and is widely regarded as one of the best analysts, working on ShoBox, Premier Boxing Champions and Broadway boxing. Farhood serves as researcher and ringside scorer for PBC and has seen his role expand to many of the networks the series airs on.

In part 1 of this special from “On The Ropes” boxing radio, Steve Farhood shares his thoughts on the recent news of Thurman vs. Porter getting postponed due to Thurman’s car accident. Farhood also talks about Canelo vs. Khan and what he thinks will happen with Khan’s career if he gets knocked out. Additionally Steve talks about the heavyweight division, discussing the futures of Wilder, Joshua, Fury and fights that could happen. Here is what Steve Farhood had to say.

Jenna J: Keith Thurman vs. Shawn Porter was recently pushed back due to a car accident by Thurman. How disappointing was it to hear this fight is being delayed?

Steve Farhood: Well of course I was disappointed, but not that disappointed because it sounds like whatever Thurman did was pretty minor, he’s gonna be able to go back into training soon. I think in the spring we will have that fight, it’s a fight both guys want, everyone who was involved wants it, Showtime, PBC, CBS, everybody.

It’s gonna happen, sometimes when you have to wait a little bit longer for a fight you really want to see, it makes it that much more appetizing, and hopefully that will be the case with this. But there’s no reason to think the fight won’t happen, so I think in three months or four months we’ll see it.

Jenna J: One of the big surprises in 2016 was a fight that came out of nowhere, Saul Alvarez vs. Amir Khan. What do you see in that fight?

Steve Farhood: I see frustration. I see frustration on the part of Amir Khan. To me, it seems like a very strange fight for him to take. I see a guy who’s wanted Mayweather for a long time and never got him, wanted Pacquiao and never got him, and for some reason doesn’t seem to think the Kell Brook fight is as attractive to the audience as we all do, although it seems like a natural fight that would draw a huge crowd in a soccer stadium in England. As a result, he’s fighting a big junior middleweight.

You saw how much bigger Canelo was than Cotto when they fought and I think that was a large part of Canelo’s advantage over Cotto and why he beat him. Khan’s a really good fighter, from day one I said I thought he would have given Floyd a ton of trouble. He’s a good boxer, but is he strong enough to keep Canelo off of him? I just doubt that, I just find it off that he would be fighting a junior middleweight at a catch weight of 155lbs. I don’t think it’s the greatest match up for Khan.

Jenna J: Do you think he took this fight because he was unable to get a big fight more than he thinks he can actually win it?

Steve Farhood: Possibly. That’s obviously for him to determine and to say, but yeah it just seems like he’s been frustrated for so long and part of it is that there’s times in the year because of his religious convictions with Ramadan that he can’t fight, that makes it a bit difficult — that may have cost him the Floyd Mayweather fight the first time around.

Amir’s a really good fighter and it’s probably hard for him to get up for some of the lesser fighters, the Chris Algieri’s and whoever else he fights. He wants the big names and I can understand that, he deserves them, he’s a great boxer. I think he just wanted a big fight and this came along and why wouldn’t Canelo take it? It makes all the sense in the world and he’s gonna get paid well for it, so I think it makes sense for Canelo, I’m not so sure it makes sense for Khan.

Jenna J: If Khan gets knocked out in this fight, does that end him as an elite fighter in a lot of people’s eyes?

Steve Farhood: Well there’s gonna be a built in excuse, “I wasn’t really a junior middleweight, I fought a much bigger guy.” But if he gets knocked out, and especially since he’s had knockout losses in the past and he’s been down so many times in his career, that’s just gonna confirm the belief of a lot of people or the perception of a lot of people that he doesn’t have a good chin. I guess he could always fall back to a Kell Brook fight down the road, but he won’t be the A side of the equation if he gets knocked out by Canelo, that’s for sure.

Jenna J: The last time I spoke to you, you mentioned that you weren’t the biggest fan of the heavyweight division, but all of the sudden the heavyweight division has gotten interesting. What do you think of the division right now?

Steve Farhood: I have to say it has picked up. It’s a lot more interesting. The world without Vitali Klitschko and Wladimir Klitschko — as much as I like those guys and respect them and wish they had made a bigger imprint on America — it’s a more interesting division, there’s no doubt about it. Now we have a lot of question marks, Deontay Wilder will answer some questions when he fights Povetkin, if he beats him I think he’s gonna have to be taken pretty seriously as maybe the best heavyweight in the world.

Fury has to face Klitschko again, it’s gonna be interesting to see if Klitschko can do anything different, lord knows he didn’t fight a very smart fight or a very effective fight the first time around. Fury just with his sheer personality, like him or not, he brings a lot of excitement to the division and a lot of outrageousness. This is something that’s been missing. We have Martin and we don’t know a lot about him, we don’t know how good he is. Then we have Anthony Joshua and Joseph Parker, the two best young fighters in the division. All of the sudden the division is a lot better.