Amir Khan intrigued by Floyd Mayweather after Danny Garcia

Amir Khan doesn’t want to cast his sight too far ahead with a Saturday junior-welterweight title unification bout against unbeaten Danny Garcia scheduled, but the British fighter has been lured in Las Vegas this week by the idea of fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. next.

While Mayweather is still in a Las Vegas jail serving a term for a domestic violence crime, his advisor, Leonard Ellerbe, and manager Al Haymon have met this week both with Khan and the boxer’s promoter, Richard Schaefer, to discuss the possibility of a welterweight match in the near future.

Schaefer said he has a Thursday night dinner scheduled with Khan’s father, Shah, to “discuss what’s next.”

Khan said by beating Philadelphia’s Garcia (23-0, 14 knockouts) on Saturday night on HBO at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas that he believes he will have effectively cleaned out the 140-pound division.

Schaefer agreed, saying a Khan victory would force the boxer “to look at the 147-pound landscape, and the one fight he’d like there is Floyd Mayweather.”

Schaefer has helped promote all of Mayweather’s fights since 2007.

“I met with Mayweather’s manager,” Wednesday, “and they’re very interested in having a fight,” Khan said. “It’d be brilliant, whether it’s in the U.K. or here in the U.S. We could do one in each place.”

Amid reports in Las Vegas that the Ultimate Fighting Championship set a record with a $7-million live gate at MGM Grand on Saturday for a middleweight title defense by Anderson Silva over Chael Sonnen, with some websites reporting the bout generated more pay-per-view buys than the June Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley fight, Khan said boxing needs a global event like Mayweather-Khan.

“It’d bring fans back to the sport,” Khan said. “We’re losing too many fans and funds to” mixed martial arts.

Schaefer said as long as Khan can defeat Garcia, “there’s definitely interest on both sides.

“It’s not a question of if this fight will happen. The question is when it’s going to happen.”

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