By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) is reportedly close to signing to fight undefeated EBU lightweight champion John Murray (30-0, 18 KO’s) on April 16th at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, England. This is the perfect opponent for Khan, at least in terms of Murray being slow, small, inexperienced and well known in England. However, it’s horrible choice if you were to be looking at competitive fights, because Murray fights in a division below Khan, and still hasn’t faced one top tier opponent yet during his eight year pro career.

Murray is still facing Euro level opponents and not exactly shining in those fights. He looked horrid in his fight with Gary Buckland last year, and didn’t look much better in beating Andriy Kudryvtsev in September 2010. In terms of where Murray falls in the lightweight division, I have him ranked outside of the top 16, below even Kevin Mitchell. I think Mitchell would have been awful choice for Khan, but Murray is bad to the next level.

This is not a good choice and I can’t see what Khan will gain from this fight other than getting an easy payday against a bottom 20 lightweight. Murray is really slow and his no defense. This is a fighter that small lightweights like Juan Diaz, who I feel is shot, would easily beat. And given that Khan is fighting at a division above Murray, this looks like a cherry picking move.

In an article at the Manchester Evening News, Roberto Diaz, the matchmaker for Khan’s promotional company Golden Boy Promotions, said “Richard Schaefer has spoken to Khan’s people and told them that John Murray’s is interested and ready and willing to fight. He’s waiting to hear from them. There are a couple of possibilities being considered, but Murray has been added to the list. It would be a big fight in Manchester and there would be interest in the States as well. Murray is undefeated – 30-0 – and although he hasn’t had the exposure out here, he is highly ranked.”

I don’t agree that boxing fans in the United States would be interested in seeing Khan take on the unknown Murray. The casual fan over here has never heard of Murray before, and they won’t be happy to see Khan, who they don’t know either, facing some obscure fighter with zero hand speed and zero experience against upper level fighters. HBO won’t be happy if the Khan-Murray fight turns out to be a mismatch, and believe me, it will. That’s not that Khan is a great fighter, because I rank him below Devon Alexander, Timothy Bradley, Marcos Maidana and Lucas Matthysse. It’s just that I see Murray being an especially bad fighter and I think Kevin Mitchell would wipe the deck with this guy, and I don’t think much of Mitchell. I don’t know how HBO could agree to Khan facing Murray. I hope they say no to that and only agree to him facing Breidis Prescott.

Khan needs to fight guys from his own weight class, and not look to fight smaller guys so that he doesn’t get knocked out. I see fights like this as trickery.