By Dan Ambrose: With #1 WBC mandatory contender Amir Khan out of action with a hand injury, World Boxing Council welterweight champion Danny Garcia will be unable to fight him until 2017, according to WBA president Mauricio Sulaiman.
Garcia will be looking to fight someone else in October before facing the soon to be 30-year-old Khan next year. Khan wants the fight with Garcia. He just needs a little time to heal from his hand surgery.
Khan hasn’t fought since he was beaten by former WBC middleweight belt holder Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez last May. Khan was knocked completely out in the 6th round and was lying on the canvas totally unconscious. As bad as that knockout was for Khan, it’s a good thing that he won’t be back inside the ring in 2016, because it’s a good idea for him to rest for a while to recover from that KO. This means that Khan will have only fought once in 2016 and 2015.
Khan has become a part-time fighter in the last two years, and that’s obviously not good. Garcia knocked Khan out in the 4th round in 2012. Khan then spent the next four years of his career rebuilding and weaker opposition. Khan’s rebuilding stopped when he fought Canelo last May, and was knocked out. Now you have to wonder whether Khan will resume rebuilding his career. Hopefully it’s for another four-year period, because he doesn’t have the youth to be going through another lengthy rebuilding faze.
“Unfortunately, Amir Khan has an injury in his hand that required surgery so he’ll be out for the rest of the year,” said Mauricio Sulaiman to skysports.com.
Light welterweight John Molina Jr. is one of the possibilities for Danny Garcia’s next fight. It’s not a great fight, and not really fair to the contenders in the WBC’s rankings at 147 to have Molina skip over them for a title shot against. Hopefully, Garcia fights at least a contender from the welterweight division rather than picking out another guy from a division below him. We saw Garcia fight lightweight Rod Salka in 2014 in a mismatch. Salka never stood a chance and was quickly mowed down in two rounds by the bigger, stronger Garcia. Molina is a little bigger though, and he might be able to hang with Garcia for a little while before he’s knocked out.
“Khan is the mandatory for the division so we will wait until he’s healed and ready to fight,” said Sulaiman. “I believe Garcia will be defending in October and then we’ll see when Khan is ready for it.”
Garcia was supposed to be in negotiations for a fight against #2 WBC Andre Berto, but it doesn’t look like that fights going to happen unfortunately. It’s unclear what the holdup is in the negotiations. Berto at least would be a step up from Garcia’s last opponent Robert Guerrero, who has seen better days. Guerrero lost to Garcia last January by a 12-round decision, and then he lost his last fight to David Emanuel Peralta. You can understand why Guerrero was such a great opponent for Garcia, because he was no threat to him and yet he still came close to beating him. That tells you a little bit about Garcia and his ability at 147.