By William Mackay: Amir Khan is targeting the winner of the Lucas Matthysse vs. Erik Morales fight next month as the guy he wants to fight next. However, he’s making it clear that he wants Morales. It’s up in the air whether Khan will fight the hard hitting Matthysse if he beats Morales. My guess is no. Matthysse hits hard and that will probably exclude him for a Khan fight.

What I don’t understand is why does Khan want to fight Morales when he just got beat by Marcos Maidana? Khan doesn’t want to fight Maidana again, because he feels he already beat him and would beat him again easier in a rematch. Khan also feels the same way about Breidis Prescott, who knocked Khan out in the 1st round. Khan thinks it’s not necessary to fight him because he would beat him. Do you see a pattern here?

“I beat him [Maidana] fair and square,” Khan said to the guardian.co.uk. “Now he wants a rematch but I have bigger fish to fry…If I was to fight Maidana again I’d beat him again, only more convincingly this time.”

It’s easy to understand why some boxing fans think that boxing is doing down hill as a sport. There’s many reasons for this, such as most of the interesting fights ending up on pay-per-view, referees getting in the way of action or not making rulings on fouls, and the increasing tendency for fighters to avoid dangerous fights. Look at Khan. In 2010, he fought Maidana in an exciting bout that ended up being the fight of the year. Khan ran for most of the bout, pecking away with his jab and trying not to get hit.

In the 10th, he was badly hurt and needed to hold on for the last three rounds to get the win. It wasn’t a fight where Khan really established he was the better fighter in my view. All he showed was that he could survive. It wasn’t a fight you would be proud if. It was exciting due to Maidana putting pressure on the constantly running Khan. So naturally you would assume that Khan would want to fight a rematch with Maidana in order to show that he’s the better fighter and not someone that needed to be bailed out by the referee when he was getting pummeled in the last three rounds.

If nothing else, a rematch was needed because it was the fight of the years and fans badly wanted to see a rematch. Instead, we got Khan fighting little known, over-matched Irish fighter Paul McCloskey. What a disappointment. Then Khan fought an aging Zab Judah for the IBF paper title. Judah has been a trial horse for welterweights for the past five years and not a real threat to any of the champions. In other words, he was a safe fight for Khan.