By William Mackay: Golden Boy Promotions has reportedly made a request to the World Boxing Council (WBC) to sanction a fight between 34-year-old Erik Morales and Jorge Barrios for the absolute WBC light welterweight title, because the current WBC champion Timothy Bradley hasn’t defended the WBC title since capturing it six months ago in a fight against Devon Alexander.

Morales met with WBC president Jose Sulaiman on Tuesday about the issue, and it’s looking like they may give Morales what he and Golden Boy want. Sulaiman will have the Board of Govenors make a determination on the matter, and they should come up with verdict soon.

If Morales and does get to face Barrios for the title, Bradley will be made the WBC champion in recess. In the meantime, Morales and Barrios will battle it out for his WBC strap.

The winner of the Morales-Barrios fight will then likely face Golden Boy Promotions fighter IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan in a unification bout. Khan really wants to unify all of the light welterweight titles before moving up to the welterweight division to pursue bigger fights.

However, the current WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley isn’t interested in fighting Khan right now and is standing in the way of Khan being able to try and unify the belts. With the WBC clearing the way for Morales to fight Barrios, it gives Khan a great shot to win one more title before moving up in weight.

There’s no word about whether the World Boxing Organization (WBO) will do something similar with Bradley’s other title. Khan likely won’t stick around long enough to fight for the WBO belt unless it’s Bradley who’s facing him.

It’s unclear whether Khan will agree to face the Morales-Barrios winner. There’s not much of any kind of demand for a Khan-Morales fight because Morales isn’t seen as top champion-caliber fighter in the division. He was recently beaten by Marcos Maidana and took a pounding in that fight, although it was close at the end.

Khan mentioned Morales as a possible next opponent but also said he could face the winner of the August 27th fight between Maidana and Robert Guerrero. Boxing fans would much prefer to see Khan fight the Maidana-Guerrero winner than to see Khan beat up on a past his prime Morales in what would be strictly a fight for Khan to get a payday and a paper title.

It’s not the same thing as facing and beating Bradley for the title. Morales has looked poor in several of his fights during his comeback. To his credit, he fought well against Maidana but the fact of the matter is Morales still lost.