By William Mackay: World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan is now talking a bout against Ricky Hatton in the future. Khan recently mentioned wanting to fight Juan Manuel Marquez after Khan’s fight on December 5th against Ukrainian transplant Dmitriy Salita. In an interview with the BBC, Khan said:

“It is not nonsense [Khan fighting Hatton]. It is a fight that could happen because we are both at the same weights, I am a world champion now, Ricky has come back into the game again from retirement and he wants another shot at a world title.” I don’t know but it sounds a little like a pipe dream on Khan’s part, because Hatton has repeatedly said that he’s not interested in fighting Khan.

Hatton instead has mentioned possibly fighting Marquez next year, and not Khan. Whatever the case, Khan isn’t about to take no for an answer and just give up on fighting Hatton. It’s hard not to see why. The alternatives of having to face tough fighters in the light welterweight division like Marcos Maidana, Timothy Bradley, Victor Ortiz, Victor Cayo, Kendall Holt and Juan Diaz isn’t all that appealing.

What makes it especially bad for Khan, besides the fact that these fighters would have a good chance of beating him, is that khan wouldn’t get huge money to fight them. However, if Khan can convince Hatton – or Marquez – to fight him, then Khan could take advantage of the big names of Hatton and Marquez to get a big payday.

It’s unfortunate that Khan is looking to fight Hatton and Marquez before he’s really proven that he’s the real deal at light welterweight. Some boxing fans may see Khan as being at the top of the heap in the light welterweight division because the WBA title he won against Andriy Kotelnik, but that fight didn’t give Khan the kind of attention he needed to increase his popularity much in the boxing world.

Still holding onto hope for a fight with Hatton, Khan says “Let’s just see how things go – it is all up to the promotion side of it. It would be a big British fight, a fight that the British fans want to see.”

There’s no question that a Hatton-Khan fight would be great for British boxing, but Amir is going to have to do some convincing to get Hatton to take the fight because he’s been reluctant to take the fight for some reason. Hatton would have a good chance of beating Khan if they fought, so it’s hard to see why Hatton doesn’t just take the fight.

You would imagine that Marquez is a much more dangerous opponent for Hatton compared to Khan. Hatton should look at the Khan fight as a tune-up bout to recover from his 2nd round knockout loss to Manny Pacquiao. If Hatton passes the test with flying colors, then by all means he should choose to move forward and go for a fight with the perceived tougher Marquez. But if Hatton loses to Khan, then it’s clearly a sign that he has nothing left in the tank.