By William Mackay: In his column at the Mirror.co.uk, former boxing great Barry Mcguigan thinks WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) did a fantastic job of stopping Paulie Malignaggi in the 11th round last week. Mcguigan thinks that Khan has the hand speed, size and strength to possibly move up to the welterweight and then maybe the junior middleweight division in the future depending on how well Khan does in the immediate future. However, he doesn’t believe that the 23-year-old Khan should go after World Boxing Organization lightweight interim champion Michael Katsidis next, saying “Khan has already been accused of fighting smaller men in the early part of his career.”

Indeed, Khan defeated a 36-year-old Marco Antonio Barrera last year by a 5 round technical decision. Barrera had fought most of his career at super bantamweight and featherweight and had only recently been selected to fight Khan. Before his fight with Khan, Barrera had recently moved up to lightweight and had looked horrible at that weight.

Khan’s promoters would like to match Khan against the smaller Katsidis, a move done perhaps to take advantage of Katsidis’ recent success in stopping Britain’s Kevin Mitchell in the 3rd round last weekend in a highly publicized fight. This would be a great fight if Khan was a lightweight like Katsidis, but as it is, it appears that Khan’s promotional team Golden Boy Promotions are looking to put him in weight a guy that they feel Khan would have a good chance of beating because of his superior size, speed, reach and boxing ability.

Rather than having Khan fight Katsidis, Mcguigan thinks that Khan should fight WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (28-1, 27 KO’s), whom he describes as “A dangerous puncher but crude.” Maidana is certainly dangerous and not the smoothest of fighters. He’s been wanting to fight Khan for some time but has been put off by Khan’s promoters and considered not well known enough for him to fight Khan. They wanted to build up more of a name for Maidana before they put Khan in with him, but it looked to some people like they were hoping to wait him out until someone else came around and beat him, which would get rid of Khan’s problem of having to fight him.

To be sure, Maidana can be out-boxed, as Andriy Kotelnik partially showed in his highly controversial 12 round decision over Maidana last year. Although many people felt that Maidana should have won that fight, including this writer, there’s no doubt he had problems with the movement and boxing ability of Kotelnik. However, it was far from an easy fight for Kotelnik, as he took an enormous amount of punishment in beating Maidana. Khan would have to take a lot of heavy shots for 12 rounds if he wanted to beat Maidana. He couldn’t just plan on moving for 12 rounds and winning without getting hit. Maidana gets in close and tends to pummel his opponents with powerful shots. All it would take is for Maidana to get close one time too many and Khan could find himself knocked out for the 2nd time in his career. This is why many people see Maidana as being a much tougher fight than guys like Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander.

Mcguigan thinks that Khan shouldn’t fight Bradley and Alexander right now, seeing them as risky fights for Khan. I agree. I think it’s nice that Khan beat another carefully selected opponent in the 29-year-old light hitting Malignaggi, but there’s a huge difference between beating the feather fisted Malignaggi compared to trying to beat Bradley and Alexander. This, too, is another fight where Khan’s brittle chin could end up betraying him again. Khan needs to know his limitations and right now those fighters appear to be a class above Khan in talent.