By Sean McDaniel: Kerry Davis, the senior vice president of sports programming for HBO, liked what he saw of WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan’s 11th round stoppage victory over Paulie Malignaggi last weekend. In an article by writer Gareth Davies of the Telegraph.co.uk, Davis said “He [Khan] has an extremely telegenic style. Speed sells; Power sells. And he has both in abundance. I was surprised that he was faster than Paulie [Malignaggi]. Paulie adjusted after a few rounds, but his speed even so is very impressive. He’s very fast. It portends to some very exciting match-ups down the road, whether that be [Marcos] Maidana, [Timothy] Bradley or [Devon] Alexander. They are fights I would pay to see as a boxing fan.”
Davis has a point. These are fights that boxing fans would want to see. Hopefully, they get to see these fighters happen sooner rather than later. There’s nothing more frustrating in seeing a hyped fighter with an inflated record built up on soft-punching opponents. This, unfortunately, is what Khan’s record is right now. Khan hasn’t beaten any huge punchers and the only real big puncher he’s faced in his career, Breidis Prescott, knocked him out in one round. Since that fight, Khan has been kept away from big punchers and put in with the likes of Oisin Fagan, Marco Antonio Barrera, Andriy Kotelnik, Dmitri Salita and Malignaggi.
In other words, all soft punchers who were of little threat to Khan’s sometimes brittle chin. That’s just the way it is. You can whitewash it any way you want, but Khan has been matched against pretty much light punchers since the Prescott fight. Khan did call out the hard hitting Maidana after Khan’s win over Malignaggi last Saturday night, but unfortunately Maidana has a hurt back and there’s a question whether he’ll be able to fight Khan any time soon. Khan wants to fight again in July, making it very tough for the injured Maidana to be ready by then. Khan’s promoter Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions is looking at matching Khan up against a lightweight, Michael Katsidis instead of putting him in with the top light welterweights.
That probably won’t do much for establishing Khan’s credibility as a future star other than proving that he can beat a shorter, smaller lightweight, who would be forced to move up in weight to fight Khan. It would be sad if Khan keeps beating these people that are put in with him only to get knocked cold once he’s matched against a top light welterweight like Maidana, Bradley or Alexander. This is why I think it’s a bad idea for Khan to fight Katsidis, even though I think it would be a much better fight than his bout against Malignaggi. Picking a lightweight reeks of cherry-picking and that’s something that Khan doesn’t need after fighting a 36-year-old Barrera, Fagan, Kotelnik, Salita and Malignaggi. Khan needs to take on one of the top fighters in the light welterweight division to show fans that he’s for real.
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