By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan is reportedly looking to take on the smaller, inexperienced and little known EBU lightweight John Murray (30-0, 18 KO’s) in his next fight on April 16th in the UK.

If the fight were to be shown just in the UK, it would be a perfect opportunity for Khan to pad his record, get an payday and avoid getting knocked out by having to face a quality fighter from his own weight class.

The one problem standing in the way of Khan being able to select an easy opponent like Murray is HBO, the American cable company that will also be showing Khan’s next fight. HBO has high standards and they seem to have adopted a policy of only agreeing to put on fights they feel will be exciting and competitive.

They no longer are agreeing to serve up mismatches, and they also don’t like to show fighters in main events that haven’t been seen before by the casual boxing fans in the U.S. This means that Murray will likely be rejected as an opponent for Khan’s next fight. Khan can always still fight Murray if he wants, but it just means that his fight probably won’t make it on HBO.

Since Khan obviously wants the money HBO will be paying him by putting his fight on their network, Khan is going to have to go back to the drawing board and look for someone that HBO will agree to show. Khan can find an easy answer to his problems if he would just agree to fight knockout artist Breidis Prescott on 4/16.

HBO will probably jump at the chance to show this fight, and it’s much more appealing that Khan trying to sneak Murray or Paul McCloskey past the network in what would likely be dull mismatches against fighters that Americans have never seen before and likely never see again after Khan easily beats one of them. HBO needs to reject Murray, McCloskey and another one of Khan’s potential opponents Lamont Peterson.

That’s not a good fight either, because Peterson looked horrible in his last fight against Victor Ortiz. If Khan wants to face Peterson and take an easy tune-up, he needs to do it without HBO because I have a feeling they’re not going to agree to that fight either. HBO believes in putting on quality match-ups like Khan vs. Marcos Maidana. That’s the gold standard right now, and Khan needs to try and measure up to that by fighting Prescott or giving Maidana a rematch.