By Nate Anderson: Former boxing great Oscar De La Hoya, the founder of Golden Boy Promotions, is ecstatic about his recent signing of WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan with his promotional outfit. De La Hoya thinks that he can make a huge star out of Khan in the United States and around the world. De La Hoya says “Amir Khan is one of the most talented fighters in the world at any weight. That talent combined with his charismatic and outgoing personality, makes him a promoter’s dream and I feel will one day lead him to being the face of boxing.”

Wow! That’s some impressive things that De La Hoya is saying about Khan. Let’s see if Khan can live up to all that De La Hoya said. Golden Boy will be picking out an opponent for Khan and there should be word about who the fighter will be shortly. By signing with Golden Boy Promotions, Khan’s fights will likely be shown on HBO because Golden Boy has a relationship with HBO and many of their fighters are regularly shown on the network.

Khan says “I’m ready to fight anyone, anywhere, anytime and know that Golden Boy will help me accomplish these goals.” Hopefully, this means that Khan will be fighting World Boxing Association interim light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana, because that’s the fight that many boxing fans were looking forward to. Some fans feel that Khan will chose to duck Maidana because he’s a huge puncher and would have a good chance of stopping Khan if given the chance.

Maidana already destroyed another Golden Boy prospect Victor Ortiz last year in a 6th round stoppage win. It would be great if Golden Boy Promotions give Khan the go ahead to fight Maidana, but that remains to be seen. Maidana punches really hard and would be a dangerous opponent for Khan, who was knocked out in the 1st round in 2008 by Breidis Prescott.

A fighter that Golden Boy might be agreeable to fighting Khan is Ricky Hatton, a recent 2nd round knockout victim by Manny Pacquiao. However, Hatton sounded less than positive about fighting Khan in a recent interview this week.

Khan is hoping to become a huge star in the United States. It’s possible that he can achieve this even if he doesn’t take on dangerous punchers or necessarily the absolute best in every division. Today’s mega stars often skip around divisions, picking and choosing beatable fighters and often staying away from dangerous fighters that have a good chance of beating them.

Khan can be managed like that and could still become a star like Floyd Mayweather Jr., and it probably wouldn’t matter to the average boxing fan if Khan never fights a huge puncher for the remainder of his career. Just as long as he looks good in beating what’s put up in front of him is what counts.