Manny Pacquiao promoter debunks report Amir Khan is next opponent

Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum quickly denounced a Tuesday report by The Daily Mail in England that Amir Khan has agreed to all terms to fight Pacquiao in April.

“There’s no truth at all to this,” Arum told The Times. “This is coming from the same people who said Lennox Lewis was coming out of retirement to fight [Wladimir] Klitschko and that Khan had a deal with [Floyd] Mayweather. Never happened.”

The Daily Mail story quoted Khan’s father, Shah Khan, as saying, “Our paperwork went off to Mr. Arum on Friday and every point is covered. … Mr. Arum has to guarantee millions to Manny and it is unlikely he can reach those numbers with either of the other candidates.”

The other candidates include unbeaten light-welterweight champion Terence Crawford and welterweight champions Timothy Bradley and Kell Brook, also from England.

Cathedral City’s Bradley has a Saturday title defense against Oxnard’s Brandon Rios at Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, and Arum said that he’ll have an extended conversation with Pacquiao after that bout about whom the Filipino wants to fight.

Khan does have the most drawing power among the candidates given his popularity in the United Kingdom and his willingness to travel for a fight that has to take place before April 9 to allow Pacquiao time to campaign for a seat in the senate in the Philippines.

Arum has said this will be Pacquiao’s final fight after he earned in excess of $150 million for his May 2 unanimous-decision loss to Mayweather in the most lucrative bout in the sport’s history. Pacquiao suffered a shoulder injury while training for Mayweather and later underwent surgery, causing the layoff.

Khan, a former light-welterweight world champion who defeated Chris Algieri and Devon Alexander in his last two fights, brings an intriguing angle to a possible Pacquiao fight.

He was trained at Hollywood’s Wild Card Boxing Club by Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach. Khan left Roach, criticizing him for his attention to other fighters and slippage because of Parkinson’s, and joined Bay Area-based trainer Virgil Hunter.

Roach last month told The Times he’d prefer that Pacquiao chose Brook.