By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan wants bigger and better things in the future after he hopefully beats Paulie Malignaggi this Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. The 23-year-old Khan is in a hurry to make a mark in the United States, hopefully against better competition than he’s been facing. Malignaggi is a small step up from the fighters Khan has been facing recently, but not the kind of competition that many of his fans were hoping he would make by now. In an article at ESPN.co, Khan says “Whoever wants to fight me, just tell them to line up, I’ll fight all of them. I’m ready, I’ll hopefully get this guy [Malignaggi] out of the way and my American debut out of the way and then I’ll be ready for all of the other fighters in the division and we’ll just go from there.”
Khan has mentioned wanting to fight a lot of fighters from Devon Alexander, Timothy Bradley, Manny Pacquiao to Floyd Mayweather Jr. The one name Khan hasn’t been mentioning is the WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana, who hits very hard and has a high pressure style of fighting. For some reason, Khan hasn’t been mentioning him. Alexander and Bradley aren’t really big punchers.
Khan should get by Malignaggi this Saturday. He appears to be the perfectly picked opponent – one with zero power, a low work rate and a constantly moving style of fighting. There’s really no threat at all in Malignaggi and in some ways he could figure to be an even easier fight than his last opponent Dimitri Salita, who Khan stopped in one round. That’s not to say that Khan will be able to knock Malignaggi out in one. That likely won’t happen because Malignaggi will be moving too much for Khan to stop early. However, at least Salita was a slight threat to Khan because he had a tiny bit of power, but Malignaggi has almost zero power.
This means that Khan’s brittle chin won’t be tested in this fight, and it likely won’t get tested in his next fight either with whoever Khan’s promotional team selects for him to fight. I seriously doubt Khan will be fighting Bradley or Alexander next. I think both of those fighters would beat Khan if given the chance. Khan will, unless his chin gives out on him again, look good against the feather-fisted Malignaggi, but it won’t really give you a clear picture of whether Khan is good or not. For that to happen, Khan will have to take a giant step up and face Maidana, Alexander, Bradley or the hard hitting Victor Ortiz next.
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