By Jason Kim: When naming fighters that he’d like to fight next, WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (51-5-1, 37 KO’s) failed to mention that of WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s), who flew all the way over from the UK just to scout Marquez, and is hoping to get a fight against the aging star in December. Marquez, however, failed to mention Khan after the fight, saying “A trilogy with [Manny] Pacquiao is what I want and it should happen. It is my number #1 priority. I will be ready to fight again in November and hopefully Pacquiao takes the fight with me.” Khan will be ready to fight again in December, and he really needs a fighter like Marquez to step in the ring with him so that Khan can try and get a huge boost up in terms of becoming well known to American audiences.

Instead of fighting the top guys from his own weight division, Khan and/or his promotional team Golden Boy Promotions, see Marquez as the key to becoming a star a lot quicker than facing guys like Timothy Bradley, Marcos Maidana and Devon Alexander. However, Marquez doesn’t appear to have any interest in fighting Khan judging by his lack of comment about him. Marquez obviously wants the big money fight against Pacquiao. He’s already fought him twice with the first fight ending in a 12 round draw and the second in a narrow, controversial 12 round split decision win for Pacquiao in 2008.

A third fight between Marquez and Pacquiao isn’t very realistic at this point. Bob Arum has other fighters that he wants to match Pacquiao up against and those are his own Top Rank fighters with the exception of Floyd Mayweather Jr. If Marquez doesn’t fight Pacquiao, then he’s going to have to make a decision whether he wants to go after a 4th world title in as many divisions by moving up to the light welterweight division and making on one of the three champions or staying at lightweight and defending his titles against Michael Katsidis, the WBO lightweight interim champion.

If Marquez decides not to fight Khan this will leave Khan in a tough position to have to decide whether to take on the best fighters in the light welterweight division or to choose to carefully pick out lightweights or softer light welterweights to fight. It would obviously be better for Khan to start stepping it up sooner rather than later, because it’s been two years already since Khan last took on a dangerous opponent and was knocked out. He’s going to have to take the training wheels off at some point because we just got a good example with Daniel Jacobs what happens when a fighter fights soft opponents for a prolonged period of time.