Amir Khan threatens to ‘slap’ Jake Paul with former boxing star ‘concerned’ about Mike Tyson fight
Amir Khan has threatened to give Jake Paul a ‘slap’ and to ‘sort him out’ if the 27-year-old beats Mike Tyson in their fight on Friday night.
The bout, which had originally been due to take place in July, has been shrouded in controversy ever since it was first announced in March.
Tyson won 50 fights as a professional boxer before walking away from the sport in 2005 on the back of two straight defeats.
As for Paul, the youngster has won 10 of his 11 bouts – with a loss to Tommy Fury in February last year the only blot on his record.
Khan, speaking to Prime Casino, has admitted he’s ‘concerned’ about the fight.
Not only is Tyson 58, the boxing legend also suffered an ulcer flare up earlier in the year – leading to worries about his health.
Khan said: “I am concerned. Yeah, 100 per cent.
“Every fight you go into, especially at the age he’s at — is he going to take it seriously? I think so, but how seriously is he going to take it?
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“Everyone remembers Mike Tyson, that tough tough fighter, that great world champion, that animal of a fighter, but I don’t want a fight like this to tarnish his record because a lot of people are going to think he’s a joke.
“We don’t really want it to get to that here fighters who have been world champions, and been up there as one of the best out there, now being beaten by YouTubers?
“It’s not a good look for boxing.”
Khan, like many other figures associated with the sport, isn’t happy with the decision for the fight to go ahead.
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And he’s now threatened to slap Paul if he ends up inflicting serious damage on Tyson.
The 37-year-old added: “It’s a tough one that is but I wouldn’t want to jump in the ring.
“At the end of the day it’s Mike’s decision to go in the ring and fight.
“If he gets beat you want to protect your friend and jump in and say I’ll give a beating for him, so if he beats Mike Tyson yeah definitely I’d like to give him a little slap and sort him out.”
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As for Khan, the former boxing star retired from the sport back in 2022.
He admits, however, that he’d be tempted to go up against Manny Pacquiao if he was to put on his gloves once again.
“The motivation is always going to be there. We’re friends. We’ve fought each other. We’ve trained with each other,” he added.
“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.
“There is interest there but I’ve left it to the team. Manny is showing some interest as well. Let’s see with this new entry — you’re got Saudi Arabia, UK boxing is big — 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 are 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.”