By William Mackay: For the last couple of months all IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-1, 18 KO’s) has been talking about is a fight between him and boxing’s biggest star Floyd Mayweather Jr.

It didn’t make sense at the time and it still make sense given that Khan has fights ahead of him that he absolutely has to win in order to even be in consideration. Khan has scaled back the quality opposition since surviving a scare against Marcos Maidana last December and has beaten Paul McCloskey, and old Zab Judah and is now facing Lamont Peterson (29-1-1, 15 KO’s).

We still don’t know what Peterson can do, as he’s looked good in some fighters and mediocre in others. Khan has to beat Peterson on December 10th in their fight Convention Center, Washington, District of Columbia.

If Khan loses, then he can forget about a fight against Mayweather for some time to come. It doesn’t mean that he’ll never get the Mayweather fight, but rather it will take more time to build himself back up to that stage.

Peterson has the tools to beat Khan. He’s got when he loads up on his shots and can box quite well. In Peterson’s only loss of his career against Timothy Bradley in 2012, Peterson had problems with Bradley’s superior hand speed and his powerful combinations.

Bradley was able to get inside on Peterson and blast him with hard combinations before Peterson could do much in return. It was a bad mistake by Peterson not to back away and keep Bradley at a distance because it was a winnable fight for Peterson if he was able to stick to the outside and not let Bradley come crashing in on him again and again.

Peterson says he knows how to beat Khan, and is going to be looking to take the fight to him and force him into a war that Khan can’t win. All Peterson has to do is force Khan into a war, and he’ll have a better than average chance of knocking him out.

The way to beat Khan is to pressure him and look to hurt him with every punch thrown. That in turn will force Khan to run around the ring all night long expending energy. He doesn’t like to get hit and will run in order to avoid getting hit hard.