By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s), instead of fighting a light welterweight next, he could be facing a lightweight if his promoter Richard Schaefer, the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions has his way. According to Sportsillustrated.com, Schaefer would like to match Khan against Michael Katsidis next on July 31st to get in one more fight before Ramadan. The grand strategy that Schaefer has is he’d like to match Khan with Katsidis on the same date as the Juan Manuel Marquez fight against Juan Diaz. Khan would be fighting Katsidis in England, while Marquez-Diaz would be taking place in the United States at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The winner of those fighters, in turn, would meet up later in the year for what would be a mini-mega fight. Schaefer says “I would like to see the winner of the Marquez-Diaz fight face Amir,” in an article by Ron Lewis of Timesonline.co.uk.

Schaefer believes that Khan could emerge from these two fights as a big star in the United States if he wins both of them. What Schaefer doesn’t talk about is the size difference between Khan, Diaz, Marquez and Katsidis. All of those fighters are lightweights and not particularly big ones. Presumably, they would be forced to move up to light welterweight to fight Khan at 140, rather than Khan coming down to lightweight to fight them. That might be asking a lot of these fighters to have to gain weight to fight at light welterweight, you would think.

Diaz has already tried his hand at light welterweight, fighting twice against Paulie Malignaggi, winning one fight and losing the second. Suffice to say, Diaz looked horrible at light welterweight. He was much too small for the weight and not nearly the same fighter at that weight as he is at lightweight. Marquez has fought most of his career at featherweight and only moved up in weight in 2007. He’s not looked nearly as good after moving up to lightweight than he did at featherweight and super featherweight.

And Marquez looked dreadful at welterweight last year when he fought Floyd Mayweather Jr. So I’m assuming Marquez would have to come up in weight too so that Khan could have his fight against him, if he beats Diaz? I don’t know that Marquez would take that fight. His trainer Nacho Beristain already said no to a fight against Khan earlier this year. What makes Schaefer so certain he will say yes now? And Katsidis is only 5’7”, and not really built for the light welterweight division. I’m sure he could do it in a pinch, but I think he would be at a tremendous disadvantage if he was to have to fight the 5’10” Khan.

I think its good match-making by Schaefer if he can pit Khan against a lightweight, but I fail to understand why he would do it. Are they doing that to build up Khan’s reputation the easy way? Why not have Khan fight the best light welterweights? I mean, that is the division he’s currently fighting in and he does hold a title right now. What boxing fans think of Wladimir Klitschko if his promoter was picking out cruiserweights for him to fight while he was building his name?

Even if the cruiserweights had to put on some weight to fight him, they would still be at a huge disadvantage you think. Marcos Maidana, the opponent that Khan was calling out after his recent win over Paulie Malignaggi, has a bad back and probably won’t be able to fight Khan. I can accept that, but why not put Khan in with Ricardo Torres then? I think that would be a much better fight than having Khan matched against lightweights. Torres might knock Khan out, but at least Khan would be fighting a light welterweight who is around his size. I think it’s safe to say that Khan will never fight a guy like Torres and I’m starting to wonder about whether he’ll ever face Maidana as well.