By William Mackay: Next month barring any kind of injury or problems with Andriy Kotelnik (31-2-1, 13 KOs) or Amir Khan’s (20-1, 15 KOs) teeth, we should be seeing what could end up being a very competitive fight. Khan, 22, is the favorite in this fight because of his better offensive skills but you never know what could happen in a fight like this because Khan has so little experience against top notch opposition other than Breidis Prescott and Marco Antonio Barrera.

Their fight was supposed to take place on June 27th, but was postponed because of a tooth infection problem for Kotelnik.

Khan may just have captured his finest win of his career in his last bout, a 5th round technical decision over Barrera on March 14th. Khan looked impressive in dominating Barrera for five rounds until the bout was ultimately stopped in the 5th because of a cut on the forehead of Barrera.

The early stoppage robbed Khan of what looked what could have been an easy 12 round decision over Barrera. Instead, Khan had to be satisfied with dominating Barrera over five rounds instead of 12. The way that the fight ended seemed to fuel the speculation that Khan still hasn’t proven that he can beat a top tier fighter.

Part of the blame rests on Khan, because perhaps wasn’t the wisest move to select an old fighter like Barrera to get in the ring with. Money wise, sure this was a good fight for Khan because it gave him the opportunity to get a good payday without the risk that would be involved had he fought a top fighter like Nate Campbell. Juan Manuel Marquez or Timothy Bradley.

Choosing an older fighter like Barrera, whose best days are behind him by five to eight years, it wasn’t something that would get Khan much credit no matter how easily he defeated him. On July 18th, Khan should get a lot more credit if he can beat the 31-year-old Kotelnik.

The Ukrainian isn’t the best of the light welterweights in the division, but he’s at least a top five fighter and that won’t hurt Khan any. No one would expect Khan to step up immediately into the light welterweight division and fight someone like Bradley, Kendall Holt, Ricardo Torres or Victor Ortiz.

Khan can’t be blamed for choosing what many people feel who is the weakest of the light welterweight champions in Kotelnik. If Khan continues to skip around after beating Kotelnik looking for beatable opponents, then I’ll certainly feel different about him, but for now I’ll give khan a pass for fighting Kotelnik instead of Bradley or Holt.

But from this point forward, Khan needs to stick to the tougher opponents and stay away from fighting older fighters like Barrera and lesser ones like Osin Fagan. Khan needs to stay in the fast lane and continue with quality fighters in the future. I’m really hoping that Khan decides to defend the WBA light welterweight title if he’s lucky enough to beat Kotelnik, because I’d like to see Khan in against someone like Ortiz, Marcus Maidana, Victor Cayo or Campbell.

I think all of those are winnable fights for Khan if he can learn enough from his trainer Freddie Roach on how to defend his sometimes weak chin. If Khan get by those fighters without getting smashed like he was against Prescott, then I can see Khan holding onto the WBA title for some time to come but it’s not going to be easy because he’ll be tested big time by each of these guys.

If Khan vacates the title and moves back down to the lightweight division, then I can see Khan being hounded by criticism for some time to come.

Whether Khan is ready for Kotelnik or not is the big question. If one were to focus on the Barrera fight, you could say that Khan should be more than ready. But that fight ended much too quickly to find out whether khan could continue to fight well into the later rounds. Kotelnik will probably be there for the full 12 rounds and it will come down to whether Khan has the endurance to fight him long into the bout.