By Sean McDaniel: According to reports, WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan will be meeting with his old trainer today Alex Ariza to possibly mend fences with him and have him back on board as his trainer. Khan looked horrible in his last fight against Paul McCloskey, looking tired by the 6th round and seemingly not in a good position to go another six rounds had the fight not been abruptly halted due to a head clash in the 6th.

Ariza had done a good job previously of training Khan for his important bout against knockout artist Marcos Maidana last year. However, Khan suddenly let Ariza go before training camp started to get ready for the McCloskey fight and picked up another trainer.

It’s really unclear whether Ariza would have made a difference in the McCloskey fight or not. Khan seemed to be tired because, unlike in the Maidana fight, Khan was throwing a lot of punches and missing with them. McCloskey had Khan hitting air for much of the fight. When a fighter misses, they tend to get tired quickly. Khan also was taking more chances and expending a lot more energy in the McCloskey fight than he was in the Maidana fight. The reason for that was simple. McCloskey wasn’t throwing any punches and had no power to worry Khan the way that Maidana did. As such, Khan was opening up a lot more with his offense compared to the Maidana fight. The end result was the Khan gassed out a little by the 6th. It would have likely been the same result no matter who his conditioning coach was for the fight. Khan had a weak puncher in front of him who was mostly focused on making Khan miss with his shots, and McCloskey did a great job at doing that. I doubt that Ariza will have any real affect on Khan other than perhaps psychological.

Khan’s next opponent is unknown right now. He was hoping to fight WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley, but the money offered to Bradley wasn’t enough to really make it worth the trouble to fight Khan. Bradley was guaranteed $1.2 million by HBO to fight anyone in his next fight, and he was only bumped up $100,000 to $1.3 to fight Khan. As you can see, it hardly is worth the trouble to take the fight, especially given that it was supposed to be the biggest one that could be made at light welterweight. Khan will now likely fight someone like Erik Morales or possibly Zab Judah next. Marcos Maidana and Roberto Guerrero’s names have also been mentioned as a possible opponent for Khan, but I can’t realistically see Khan fighting either of these guys. My guess is Khan takes on the old timer Morales next. He’s less dangerous than Judah and Khan would get a good payday.