By William Mackay: Freddie Roach said that Amir Khan is ready to take on the best fighters in the light welterweight division in an article at the Telegraph today. Well, on July 31st, it’s looking like Khan will be fighting 38-year-old two-time champion Joel Casamayor. Khan fans are mostly excited about this fight, even if other fans aren’t so thrilled. But since Roach is saying that Khan is ready to fight the best in the light welterweight division, the question is will Khan begin stepping it up or will his team scout out another aging star to fight?

Khan beat Paulie Malignaggi by an 11th round TKO in his last fight on May 15th. This was a good fight but in a way, it was another case of Khan facing a fading star. Malignaggi may not be old at only 29, but his 15 minutes of fame appeared to be up by the time he was selected to face Khan. That doesn’t mean that Khan couldn’t have beat Malignaggi earlier in his career, because Malignaggi was never a real puncher.

However, Malignaggi is clearly not the same fighter now as he was four years ago when he gave Miguel Cotto big problems. But it would be nice to see Khan start facing better fighters in the light welterweight division rather than some of the opponents he’s been matched against thus far. Since beating Andriy Kotelnik last year, Khan has beaten Dmitri Salita and Malignaggi.

Those are decent fighters but not really in the class of Devon Alexander, Timothy Bradley, Victor Ortiz or Marcos Maidana. Those are the guys that you would hope that Roach is talking about when he’s talking about Khan being ready to fight the best. Unless, of course, Roach is talking about Khan facing the best old fighters or the best of the weak punchers in the top 15.

But it would be nice if Khan does start taking on the truly best fighters in the division, provided he can get by Casamayor in July. Khan says he wants to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. by next year. Well if he wants to fight Mayweather, Khan at least should have one or two solid wins under his belt going into the fight with Mayweather to help sell the fight.

It might be hard if Khan’s only U.S. visibility is a win over Malignaggi and perhaps Casamayor. That might be enough to get Khan’s diehard fans interested, but it probably won’t be enough to excite U.S. boxing fans much. They’ll probably see through those wins and see it as a case of Khan cherry picking opponents rather than going after the best in the light welterweight division.