By Scott Gilfoid: Despite winning the WBA light welterweight title last year against Andriy Kotelnik, Amir Khan appears to be being brought along very slowly by Golden Boy Promotions, who matched him against the light hitting Paulie Malignaggi in his last voluntary title defense of his WBA title.
They could have put Khan in with a much tougher opponent than that by putting him in against WBA junior welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (28-1, 27 KO’s), who punches very hard and has a high pressure style offense. Instead, Khan got an easy fight against an opponent that can’t punch and who has lost two of his last four fights coming into his bout with Khan.
Now it’s looking like Golden Boy will be trying to set Khan up with one of the following lightweights: John Murray, Joel Casamayor, Juan Diaz, Juan Manuel Marquez or John Murray. These are smaller fighters than Khan, who you would assume, would be forced to move up in weight to take Khan on.
Given the track record of Khan being steered around big punchers, it’s not likely that Katsidis will get selected for a fight with Khan. Besides, he would probably want to get paid well to have to move up in weight to take on a champion. Can you blame him? Why move up in weight and take on a bigger fighter, who would have a tremendous advantage because this is his normal fighting weight and not yours.
At any rate, Katsidis probably won’t make the selection. Golden Boy would like to put Khan in with the winner of the July 31st bout between Marquez and Diaz. Marquez and his team already rejected a fight with Khan months ago, so it’s hard to imagine why Golden Boy is still looking to match Khan up with him.
They obviously must know something because Marquez wouldn’t keep getting mentioned if they knew the answer was going to be no again. I suppose Marquez will be paid well enough for him to take the fight against the younger, taller, faster and more powerful Khan.
It does seem kind of disappointing that Khan and his team are looking to match him up against lightweights, in particular an old star like Marquez, who really isn’t the same fighter he once was while fighting at featherweight. He looks much better at that weight than he does at lightweight and he might not get past Diaz on the second try.
A Khan-Diaz fight is hardly an interesting bout because Diaz was totally dominated by Malignaggi, a fighter Khan just stopped. I think a Diaz-Khan fight is clearly better than fights against Murray or Casamayor, but not very appealing when you take in the full picture and realize that Diaz was just beaten by Malignaggi.
Of course, this fight would appeal to fans with short memories and ones that have no real knowledge about boxing. A hardcore boxing fan will see it differently, as another safe fight for Khan. But one has to wonder why Khan isn’t being put in with fighters from his own weight class?
It makes sense that he should fight those guys if he’s to be holding down the belt rather than using his status as champion to lure smaller guys up from lightweight to fight him. It would be so much more interesting to see Khan face light welterweights Maidana, Victor Ortiz, Mike Alvarado or Victor Cayo rather than a much smaller lightweight. And it would be sad if Khan becomes a mega star off of wins over lightweights and light hitting junior welterweights like Malignaggi, Dmitri Salita and Kotelnik.
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