By Eric Thomas: According to the latest boxing news, ESPN writer Dan Rafael says that it’s looking good for the December 11th fight between World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan ((23-1, 17 KO’s) and WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (29-1, 27 KO’s). The contracts are reportedly close to being signed for the fight and it will likely be taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This isn’t the fight that the 23-year-old Khan wanted, however. Khan was hoping to take on a smaller and older fighter in 37-year-old WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez on December 11th. The plan was for the older and smaller boxing legend Marquez to move up in weight against the much bigger Khan.

That would have been a fight where Khan would have had less worries of being knocked out and he would have received more credit from the larger boxing public for the victory, as Marquez is much better known than the knockout artist Maidana. It would have been a fight very similar to Khan’s fight against a smaller, older Marco Antonio Barrera, who at 35, moved up in weight to fight Khan at lightweight. In the end, Barrera was too small and too old to do anything with Khan. However, Khan still got credit for beating Barrera, even though Barrera was far past his price by the time he fought Khan and fighting far beyond his best weight class.

The Maidana-Khan negotiations have been hampered by both sides being unhappy with the money split of the fight. Maidana wants more money than what was originally offered up to him, and Khan felt that Maidana was pricing himself out of the fight by asking for too much money. Maidana recently asked the WBA to call for a purse bids for the fight.

Now if it looks like Khan was get a 55-45 split of the revenue, which seems fair because he is the champion, after all.

Maidana presents a very dangerous threat to Khan due to his huge power and his heavy pressure style of fighting. Maidana is a fighter that usually wears his opponents down with his heavy shots and his constant never ending pressure. Khan supporters see this as a fight where Khan will easily be able to box Maidana from the outside without ever getting hit. That might be wishful thinking on their parts, because Maidana will probably catch up to Khan at some point in the fight and unless Khan’s chin can handle Maidana’s heavy shots, he could end up folding like he did in his 1st round knockout loss to Breidis Prescott in 2008.

Maidana could wreck Khan’s career with a single punch and that’s perhaps why Khan hasn’t been so eager to fight the Argentinian slugger in the past year. Khan has faced light punchers since being knocked out by Prescott. In his last fight, Khan stopped the weak punching Paulie Malignaggi by an 11th round stoppage in May. It was a good win for Khan, albeit against a fighter that was perfect for him because of Malignaggi’s nonexistent power.