By Sean McDaniel: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer says he wants to match WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan with Michael Katsidis next. In an article at US today, Schaefer says “He [Khan] wants [Marcos] Maidana but obviously he’s not available. What I’d like to do is make a fight with Michael Katsidis. Can you imagine that? Maybe there’s that possibility. We’ll see what we can work out.” Katsidis, 29, stopped lightweight Kevin Mitchell in the 3rd round last Saturday night in a very impressive performance by Katsidis. He lured Mitchell into brawling with him by moving away from him instead of going directly at him.
Katsidis usually is the one attacking his opponents, but in this case he retreated. Mitchell should have recognized that Katsidis was setting a trap for him and not gone after him. In the 3rd round, Katsidis badly hurt Mitchell at the start of the round with a hard left hand. He then went after him and took him out after a series of exchanges around the ring. Mitchell didn’t help himself any by fighting back instead of holding on and trying to get through the round.
Khan, for his part, defeated former IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi by an 11th round TKO at Madison Square Garden, in New York. The fight was a bit of a step up for Khan, depending on who you spoke to. Malignaggi didn’t have any offensive weapons besides a jab to match Khan’s power shots with. The fight quickly turned into a one-sided affair with Khan easily winning every round with his fast combinations and hard jab. In the 11th, the referee finally had seen enough and halted the bout as Khan was teeing off on Malignaggi along the ropes.
Khan mentioned Marcos Maidana after the fight when being asked who he will be fighting next. However, Maidana has an injured back and likely won’t be available to fight Khan by July, which is when he wants to fight again. Devon Alexander and Timothy Bradley, both light welterweight champions, have no one scheduled yet for their fights in July and August. But it looks like Khan’s management team doesn’t want to match Khan with them for some reason.
Perhaps they fear that Khan isn’t ready to face the best fighters in the light welterweight division, despite Khan saying he is ready. There’s a big different between beating guys like Marco Antonio Barrera, Andriy Kotelnik, Dmitri Salita and Malignaggi compared to taking on and beating A+ fighters like Bradley and Alexander. Khan would have a good chance of beating the 5’7” Katsidis because he would have a four inch height advantage over him and a five inch reach advantage. Also, Khan would be much faster in terms of hand speed and foot speed compared to Katsidis.
The one problem Khan would have with Katsidis is taking his shots. Katsidis hits really hard and if he was able to get inside on Khan and land, he could end up knocking Khan out like Breidis Prescott did in the past. You’d have to figure on Katsidis catching up to Khan at some point in the fight and testing his chin with something big. Khan won’t be able to run for the entire fight without getting caught a number of times by Katsidis. Khan’s face looked kind of beat up from the weak punches from Malignaggi. Katsidis hits a lot harder than Malignaggi and could end up being a real problem for Khan.
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