By Castillo Fuentes: I have come across a lot of people on this forum who think the British boxer, Amir Khan, is a over-hyped, spoon-fed boxer. I do not agree with any of those arguments. Amir Khan is a boxer with skill superior to anyone at the light-welterweight division. His past promoter, Frank Warren, got him the title fight for the WBA light-welterweight belt last year, on 2009.

He handily beat Andreas Kotelnik by a unanimous decision. Now another rising 140 pounder, Devon Alexander, is facing Kotelnik for the defense of his WBC an IBF belts. Most people would point out that Kotelnik is an old, washed up fighter who was dominated by a younger, faster, slicker Amir Khan on July 18th, 2009.

What I fail to understand is that why would Devon Alexander fight that same over-matched fighter on August 7th. One of the obvious reasons is that most boxing fans see Maidana as a world-beater, but he was out-boxed by Kotelnik en route to a split-decision loss. All of those people fail to understand that Maidana has the boxing skill of a 13 year old. He swings way too wide at times, and he has no defense, as witnessed in his fight with Victor Ortiz, in which he was down three times before the inexperienced Ortiz succumbed to the hard punches of the Argentinean.

Most of us remember the 2008 1st round knockout loss that Amir Khan suffered against Breidis Prescott. Prescott, who is a big puncher, caught Khan with three clean and heavy shots before he went down for the first time in the fight. He landed another heavy blow to Khan’s jaw which knocked him out in 54 seconds. After the loss, he teamed up with world renowned trainer Freddie Roach, who has polished his rough skill like a piece of fine wood. Khan blasted journeyman Oisin Fagan in two rounds before beating an old, but still dangerous Marco Antonio Barrera on a 5th round technical decision. He then beat Kotelnik on a wide unanimous decision, knocked out Dmitry Salita in 76 seconds, and beat the fast talking, faster boxing Paulie Malignaggi at his own game, en route to a 11th round TKO. Many critics of Khan, including myself at times, want him to fight a big puncher, and his next fight looks to be shaping up that way.

Maidana has an injured back, and backed out of a fight with the 140 pound “front-runner”, Timothy Bradley. The next option for Khan is to fight a hard punching lightweight who can jump up to a catch-weight of 138 pounds, Michael Katsidis. Katsidis, coming off a 3rd round TKO of British lightweight champion Kevin Mitchell, has an impressive 27 wins, 22 of which are by knockout. This fight is perfect for Khan, because he can show that he can out-box a big puncher. He has the physical tools to bother Katsidis (height, reach, speed), while having a superb trainer draw up a great game plan.