Former world champion Amir Khan is not a big fan of the growing trend of exhibition events in boxing.
Earlier this month, one of the bigger exhibition fights took place with five division champion Floyd Mayweather, 44-years-old, stepping back in the ring to trade punches with Youtube star Logan Paul. The bout went the full eight round distance.
Khan fears that someone may get seriously injured - when a seasoned boxer is matched up against a social media star.
"I'm not really a big fan of that exhibition thing. No disrespect to Floyd or the other fighters that are doing that, but I just think it's not good for the sport of boxing," Khan explained to Brian Custer on The Last Stand podcast.
"People are not taking boxing seriously and boxing's a sport where, the time they are going to start taking it seriously is when someone gets badly hurt.
"We just don't want that to happen. I think it would be quite tarnishing for boxing if God forbid a YouTuber got knocked out by a professional fighter. You can't really compare the two. I would never do that because I would be scared to hurt someone. If you hurt an influencer and you are the fighter that people always respected, you're going to lose that respect."
For several years, Khan aggressively made attempts to secure a showdown with Mayweather, but their match never came together for one reason or another.
Regardless of the money that was generated, Khan believes Mayweather should have never allowed himself to share the ring with someone like Paul.
He felt the contest backfired on Mayweather when Paul managed to last the full distance.
"Really, you shouldn't be sharing the ring with that person. Floyd did it a couple of weeks ago in Miami other day against Logan Paul," Khan said.
"He couldn't hurt Logan and it looked bad for him. Him being a trained professional fighter for many years, whereas Logan came, put his gloves on and went in the ring.
"A lot of people said Floyd didn't look the same. Really, he got more bad comments than he got good comments in that fight. Did he really need the money? No. We don't think he does. But going into that fight he got a lot more hate because he couldn't knock out a guy who's worse than a journeyman basically."
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