By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan’s time at light welterweight is nearing it’s end, as he’s saying he plans on fighting only two more times and then move up to the welterweight division, likely to try and chase down a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. That’s really the only point in Khan moving up in weight because the welterweight division is pretty much a dead division other than Manny Pacquiao, who Khan says he won’t fight, Mayweather Jr. and Victor Ortiz.

Speaking on his twitter page, Khan said “I’d like to have two more fights then I’ll move up to 147 lbs. I offered and beat everyone in 140 pounds.”

If Khan moves up in weight without fighting the winner of Lucas Matthysse vs. Devon Alexander, I’d say that Khan will have hardly beaten everyone at light welterweight. He would have skipped out on facing one of these two dangerous fighters. I would pick Matthysse to beat Khan right now any day of the week.

A fight between Khan and Mayweather may not happen unless Mayweather starts showing interest in Khan. Thus far, he doesn’t even acknowledge Khan. That may change in the future if Khan beats IBF light welterweight champion Zab Judah on July 23, and if he can beat WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley as well. However, there is just as much a chance that Khan loses to both of those guys than him beating him.

Khan seems to be around the same level as Marcos Maidana in terms of ability at light welterweight, meaning that Khan can be beaten at any time. A loss to Judah will wipe out any chances of Khan facing Bradley and Mayweather. It would be a case where Khan would have to work his way back up the food chain for a year or two unless those guys want to fight Khan with him coming off of a likely knockout loss. I kind of doubt that Khan’s promoters will want to match him tough for a while after he gets beaten by Judah and/or Bradley.

The idea of moving up to welterweight may be a bad one for Khan, because he’s considered big at light welterweight because of his 5’10” height but at welterweight, Khan will be more of an average sized fighter and won’t be able to count on his size to help him beat guys. Unless they keep him away from the better fighters in the welterweight division, I can see Khan getting beaten over and over again without stop. I don’t see Khan being on the same level as Ortiz, Mike Jones and of course Mayweather.

Khan will likely be steered towards the WBA welterweight paper champion Vyacheslav Senchenko in his first fight at welterweight in order to try and get Khan a paper title so that he can use it as leverage to get a bigger payday against whoever comes later.