By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) recently said on his Twitter page that he wants to fight WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (26-0, 11 KO’s) next, and that he plans on talking to Golden Boy Promotions about having them set up a fight against Bradley.

I don’t know whether to believe Khan or what. Khan said the same thing about Marcos Maidana, but then has failed to go after the hard hitting Argentinian fighter. Of course, sometimes Khan really does end up fighting the guys that he talks about. Before facing Paulie Malignaggi last May, Khan was really excited about fighting him and couldn’t wait to get in the ring with him.

There’s a huge difference between Malignaggi and Bradley, though, and that makes me wonder if Khan will decide to fight someone else instead in his next fight. The previous plan was for Khan to fight the winner of the lightweight bout between Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz on July 31st.

That’s an easier option for Khan, because the winner of that fight, a smaller lightweight, would then have to move up in weight to take on Khan for his World Boxing Association light welterweight title rather than Khan having to struggle to trim off weight to fight for the WBO lightweight title against Marquez or Diaz.

Khan’s promoters are probably going to hesitate before putting Khan in with a guy like Bradley, because he has much more experience than Khan against top level opposition and seems to be fighting at a higher compared to Khan right now. Khan has the better power and hand speed, but there are questions about how good of a shot that Khan can take.

He hasn’t had to take too many shots since being stopped by Breidis Prescott in 2008. Since that defeat, Khan has faced and beaten the following fighters Oisen Fagan, Marco Antonio Barrera, Andriy Kotelnik, Dmitri Salita, and Malignaggi. The fights against Barrera, Fagan and Salita ended quickly with Khan getting hit seldom.

However, if Khan ends up fighting Bradley, he will get hit a lot, over and over again, and his chin might not be up to it to take that kind of punishment. It doesn’t matter if Bradley isn’t a big puncher, just by landing a lot of shots, he’s going to be a danger for Khan. This is why I doubt that Golden Boy is going to want to mess things up and ruin a future cash cow before he’s been properly milked.