By William Mackay: I always find it interesting to see Amir Khan’s loyal fans saying that Khan deserves to fight an easy tune-up fight against the weak-punching Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) because of Khan’s hard fight with Marcos Maidana in December. Since Khan was nearly knocked out in that fight and took a frightful beating despite running for his life the entire fight, Khan’s fans think it’s okay for him to fight a non-dangerous puncher like McCloskey instead of someone that knocked him out in the past like Breidis Prescott.

Being a fan of the sport, I’m not particularly interested in letting fighters get a free ride for easy tune-ups or cherry picking fights. Goodness knows, we have enough of those fighters already in the sport fighting soft touches as much as humanly possible to prolong their reign at the top. I wouldn’t mind Khan getting a nice easy fight if Khan had been facing nothing but tough opponents in the past three years, but I don’t see that as the case. Let’s look at who Khan has faced since being stopped by Prescott in 2008.

Khan has beaten the following fighters since then: Oisen Fagan (B level fighter), Marco Antonio Barrera (a 35-year-old shot, super featherweight and the fight was stopped due to a head butt in the 5th), Andriy Kotelnik (a weak punching paper champion), Dimitri Salita (a fighter with a grossly inflated #1 ranking by the WBA and who probably didn’t deserve to be ranked in the top 20, let alone at #1), Paul Malignaggi (a weak punching former IBF light welterweight champion) and Maidana.

The Maidana fight was the only one I really rank as being a tough fight for Khan, and Khan basically ran the entire fight. So because Khan fought one really tough fight in the past three years, we’re supposed to look the other way while he takes on the soft touch McCloskey? Not me. Fightnews doesn’t even have McCloskey ranked in the top 16 in the light welterweight division and neither do I.