On this day, Amir Khan defeated Zab Judah in a unification bout at the junior welterweight division as Khan made his first defense of his WBA world title while picking up the IBF world title from Judah who looking to make his first world title defense as well.
The bout was agreed on May 31, 2011, as it took place in Las Vegas on July 23. Khan was pursuing a bout with Timothy Bradley but claimed that Bradley was not willing to fight him and fought Judah instead.
Khan entered the fight with a record of 25-1, with 17 knockouts, and Judah, had a record of 41-6, with 28 knockouts. Entering the contest, Judah was a three-to-one underdog. Fighters such as Bernard Hopkins and Joe Calzaghe attended the HBO Championship Boxing main event, and a memorial ten-count was held to honor the recently deceased Butch Lewis.
In typical Khan fashion, he started fast and strong.. Khan won the first four rounds. In the fifth round, a confusing incident occurred. Khan delivered a right uppercut to Judah's body, initially thought to be a low blow due to Judah's apparent pain. However, upon review, it was clear that the punch landed right on the belt, so the fight was called making Khan the winner via knockout. This was Khan's eighteenth knockout of his career.
Punch stats showed the following Khan landed 61 of 284 total punches (21%), while Judah landed 20 of 115 (17%).
Khan was paid $1,072,500 for the fight, while Judah received a $500,000 purse.
The fight averaged 1.4 million viewers on HBO and peaked at 1.417 million viewers. Despite the fact that Khan didn't fight Timothy Bradley Jr., the fight was watched by a lot of people and created a lot of excitement around the career of Amir Khan.
