Khan to fight Cano, Soto, Lopez or Senchenko on April 20th

By Boxing News - 01/25/2013 - Comments

khan222By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (29-3, 19 KO’s) has four possibilities for his upcoming April 20th fight, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. If Khan fights in the United States on that date, which doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, Khan will be fighting the recently knocked out Josesito Lopez (30-5, 18 KO’s).

If Khan fights in the UK, Khan will be fighting one of three following opponents: Vyacheslav Senchenko (33-1, 22 KO’s), Humberto Soto (59-8-2, 34 KO’s) or Pablo Cesar Cano (25-2-1, 19 KO’s).

Since it doesn’t look like the fights going to take place in the U.S, you can pretty much eliminate Lopez from the list right off the bat. Anyways, it doesn’t matter even if he still was on the list because he just got trounced by WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez in his last fight and it looks silly that he’s on Khan’s list.

Fighting opponents coming off of one-sided beat downs isn’t exactly sporting in my view.
Of the three candidates that are being considered for Khan’s UK fight, Senchenko obviously is the leading candidate by virtue of his recent 9th round TKO win over a faded Ricky Hatton last November.

With Khan thinking about staging his UK fight in Manchester, it will give Khan a chance to show how much better he is than Hatton by facing Senchenko and beating him to avenge Hatton’s loss. It’s silly because it wouldn’t tell us anything because Hatton was past his prime when he fought Senchenko, had recently taken off 70 pounds of flab, and hadn’t fought in three years. Khan gains nothing from a win over Senchenko because the feather-fisted Paulie Malignaggi already stopped Sencheko last year. That right there would be enough for me to tell Golden Boy to scratch Senchenko off the list.

Cano (25-2-1, 19 KO’s) is coming off of a 12 round split decision loss to Malignaggi last October. Cano didn’t do much in the Malignaggi fight other than knocking him down in the 11th round with a right hand. Cano’s hand speed is just so slow. It’s hard to imagine a fighter ranked in the top 15 with hand speed as slow as Cano’s. He looked terrible in taking a beating and getting stopped by an over the hill Erik Morales in September 2011.

To Cano’s credit, he won his next three fights against weak opposition, but then he was beaten by Malignaggi, a fighter that a lot of boxing fans see as a paper champion.
Humberto Soto, 32, was recently stopped by Lucas Matthysse last year in June. Soto just doesn’t have the size to be fighting at light welterweight or welterweight, and he really, really needs to move back down to lightweight or preferably super featherweight if he wants to find any success.

I see Golden Boy netting Senchenko for Khan on April 20th. That is, if Manny Pacquiao doesn’t wind up facing him. Senchenko is a beatable fighter and Khan will seem heroic to some Brits for avenging Hatton’s loss. In reality, if it wasn’t Senchenko that beat Hatton last November then it could have been anyone because Hatton just looked like a shell of his former self. Senchenko didn’t beat Hatton because he’s a good fighter; he beat him because Hatton wasn’t the same fighter and had rushed his comeback instead of taking the slow approach.



Comments are closed.