By Scott Gilfoid: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (22-1, 16 KO’s) has been talking about retirement a lot lately. First it was his five year place in which Khan says that he’ll be hanging up his gloves in the next five years at the age of 28 – after having faces both Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

And now the 23-year-old Khan is saying he’ll be sending his next opponent former International Boxing Federation (IBF) light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (27-3, 5 KO’s) into retirement when they meet on May 15th at Madison Square Garden, in New York. In an article at Manchesterevening news, Khan says “A lot of people want to see him [Malignaggi] get beat. No one has done a proper job on him, so I want to be the first person to do a proper job on him. He’ll be hanging up his gloves after this fight.” I kind of doubt it.

Malignaggi, win or lose, will continue to fight no matter what happens. Unlike other fighters that have made huge amounts of money and can afford to retire, Malignaggi likely hasn’t made a huge bundle that compares to the big named fighters that have hung up the gloves in the past couple of years. Khan says that a lot of boxing fans want to see Malignaggi get beat. You could also say the same thing about Khan. There’s a lot of fans that want to see Khan get beaten, because they feel that he has cherry picked opponents during his career.

Whatever the case, Khan will have to take the plunge against top fighters soon if he plans on keeping his WBA light welterweight title, as he’ll have to eventually face Marcos Maidana, the WBA light welterweight interim champion and number #2 contender Victor Ortiz.

Malignaggi has been stopped once in his career, losing by an 11th round TKO to Ricky Hatton in 2008. That stoppage was questionable because Malignaggi was still fighting back at the time the fight was stopped. Khan says he wants to make it a conclusive stoppage, remarking “Ricky [Hatton] stopped him in the 11th, but I want to finish him off cleanly so there are no excuses. I want him to come out and say I beat him fair and square.”

Boxing fans wanted to see Khan face Maidana. However, Khan and his promotional team Golden Boy Promotions opted for the soft-hitting Malignaggi, who enters the May 15th fight having lost two out of his last four fights. It’s not hard to see why Malignaggi was selected for Khan. He’s had problems in his last fight, doesn’t have any punch, and tends to move a lot. Malignaggi is the opposite of Maidana and Breidis Prescott. It was Prescott who knocked Khan out in the 1st round in 2008. Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach thinks that Khan can become the next big star in boxing along the same lines as Manny Pacquiao. That remains to be seen.

Khan will have to prove that his chin can stand up to a major league puncher before people are ready to crown him as the next big star. We probably won’t learn much from the Khan-Malignaggi fight, aside from the fact that Khan can beat a light puncher that moves a lot.