By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan isn’t ready to dismiss his next opponent Dmitry Salita (30-0-1, 16 KO’s) as an easy mark, and believes that Salita will give him a tough fight in their December 5th bout. Khan, 22, will be making his first defense of his World Boxing Association light welterweight title, which he won in July with a 12 round unanimous decision over Andriy Kotelnik. It may sound strange but Khan feels that the untested Salita will be an even tougher fight for him than Kotelnik.

Salita certainly don’t look as good as Kotelnik in the few fights I’ve seen of him. His hand speed is slower than Kotelnik, his defense much more wide open, his power not as good and his punch assortment less. Maybe Khan is just trying to be nice by saying that Salita will be tougher for him, but it’s hard to see what he’s talking about when looking at Salita’s past fights.

Salita has faced zero top level fighters up to this point in his six year pro boxing career, with the best fighter, perhaps, on his record being the B level fighter Ramon Montano who knocked Salita down two times in the first round of their fight in 2006. The bout ended up being an eight round draw, but it appeared that Montano won the fight.

“It was tough winning the title, but even tougher keeping it,” Khan said. Yes, it will be much tougher keeping it for Khan, as he took on Kotelnik, who at the time was perceived to be the weakest of the light welterweight champions. Naturally, it wouldn’t be hard to win a title against what many people feel was a hand picked opponent for Khan.

Keeping his WBA title will be tougher, especially after Salita is out of the way, because the interim WBA light welterweight champion is Marcos Maidana, a brutal puncher with knockout power in each hand. Khan, if he’s serious about holding onto the title, will have to face Maidana at some point in the near future.

Many people expect that Khan will vacate the WBA title before he’s forced to fight Maidana, because that would appear to be an almost certain knockout loss for the weak-chinned Khan. Though boxing fans would like nothing better to see Khan face sluggers like Maidana and Breidis Prescott, the chances of that happening appear to be remote.

This is why it’s amusing to see Khan talking about wanting to hold onto the WBA title. It’s easy to say that when he’s facing Salita, who has done nothing to be ranked number #1 in the division other than beating B and C level fighters. After Salita is out of the way, Khan gets an optional defense and one can expect that it will be another soft opponent along the lines of Salita. After that, however, it gets a little trickier because Khan would then be looking at fighting Maidana or at the minimum another mandatory challenger.