By William Mackay: WBA Super World light welterweight champion Amir Khan has been campaigning long hard for a shot at arguably boxing’s biggest star and moneymaker Floyd Mayweather Jr. Despite only a handful of fights against guys that you could considerable credible, Khan feels that he’s deserving of a Mayweather Jr. fight.
Boxing fans want to see Khan fight Breidis Prescott again after losing by a 1st round knockout to him. They also want to see Khan fight Marcos Maidana once before to show that he can finish strong instead of grabbing and holding the last three rounds. What Khan needs is several big fights to show that he deserves to be in with Mayweather.
But short of that, boxing fans would like to see Khan in with at least one more good fighter that can test his chin like Lucas Matthysse, Prescott or a rematch with Maidana. However, what fans want and what Khan wants are two different things. Khan wants to fight the aging over-the-hill Erik Morales next for his last fight at 140 before moving up in weight.
It’s basically another safe fight for Khan in the same class as his fights against Paulie Malignaggi, Andriy Kotelnik, Paul McCloskey, Dmitriy Salita, and Zab Judah. Sadly, these are pretty much what Khan has been facing for the past two years apart from his one step up fight against Maidana where Khan almost knocked out.
I still think Khan would have been knocked out had there been a different referee working the fight that didn’t break up the action in the last three rounds when Khan was taking punishment from Maidana. The fight was controversial in my mind because of how often referee Joe Cortez chose to break up action when Khan was getting pulverized on the inside by Maidana. Also, there was a lot of holding on the back of the neck and shoving by Khan in that fight that I felt should have led to several penalization’s. Oddly enough, it was Maidana that was penalized for throwing an elbow that never landed.
If Matthysse wins the September 17th fight against Morales, I see Khan choosing to ignore the dangerous Matthysse and opt to fight the light hitting Lamont Peterson, who is more of a slapper. He’s another safe fight for Khan and will allow him to progress to the next level to face Mayweather in 2012, and lose badly.
Prescott is facing Paul McCloskey on September 10th in Ireland in a WBA light welterweight title eliminator. You can forget about Prescott getting another fight with Khan if he wins, and he likely will. Khan is perfectly content with not fighting Prescott.
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