by William Mackay: Unhappy with WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan’s recent comments about Malignaggi retiring after if/when he beats him on May 15th at Madison Square Garden, in New York, the 29-year-old Malignaggi responded with this message from his Twitter account: “Beat me into retirement? Khan has been taking his balls out his purse lately. Khan can talk all he wants, because he knows as soon as he steps foot in New York City, the tone on his twitter will change.” Khan has been unusually vocal lately, slamming both Malignaggi and Carl Froch, talking retirement for both of them and outlining his own 5 year retirement plan for his career.

Malignaggi and Khan have been going at it back and for over a month on their Twitter pages. Malignaggi doesn’t feel respected, as he feels that Khan is overlooking him and he’s not being given much credit for his past accomplishments as a former IBF light welterweight champion. Malignaggi doesn’t have much power to speak of, but he’s hard to hit and very crafty. He knows how to sell a fight because of his gift for gab.

However, for this fight, Malignaggi hasn’t been talking nearly as much as he normally does for some reason. It could be that Malignaggi is letting Khan play the bad guy for this fight to sell tickets. Khan is doing a decent job, but it will probably take more than that to get a lot of interest from fans, because Khan isn’t well know in the United States by the casual boxing fans.

This will be Khan’s first fight in American, so this is his big opportunity to show what he’s got and prove that he belongs up on top with the likes of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Khan has got to be able to dominate Malignaggi to prove that he has what it takes to be one of the future mega stars.

Khan had this to say about Malignaggi at the Manchester Evening News, “Malignaggi can sell a fight. He talks a lot and I need someone like that to get me a name in America. A lot of people want to see him get beat…He’ll be hanging up his gloves after this fight.”

Khan must be thinking he’s going to beat Malignaggi along the same lines that fellow British fighter David Haye did with John Ruiz earlier this month. If Khan is to have a chance of carrying out his words, he’s going to have to stop moving as much, and sit down on his punches more. Khan has become more of a mover since Freddie Roach started training him recently.

When Khan does stop and throw punches, he tends to throw fast punches and then get away quickly. He’s not really sitting down on the shots like he used to. He did fight well against Dimitri Salita in his last fight, stopping him in the 1st round, but Salita wasn’t the best opponent out there and Khan could afford to take chances against him.