By William Mackay: Amir Khan has been licking his chops at the idea of fighting the faded 34-year-old Erik Morales (51-7, 35 KO’s) for the WBC light welterweight title on December 10th, a fight where Khan would be looking to add a third light welterweight title to his IBF and WBA collection.

However, there is a fighter standing in the way of Khan’s plans and that’s Argentinian knockout artist Lucas Martin Matthysse (28-2, 26 KO’s), who faces the soon to be 35-year-old Morales next month on September 17th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Matthysee can punch and is like a better version of Marcos Maidana. Khan isn’t keen in facing the hard hitting Matthysee if he’s the one that picks up the World Boxing Council title.

Khan prefers Morales, who is better known among the aging boxing fans who remember him for his fights against Marcos Antonio Barrera and Manny Pacquiao. Younger boxing fans only know Morales from his loss to Maidana in his last fight in April where Morales right eye was swollen to grotesque by the end of the fight. Morales fought well but ran out of gas in the last three rounds and lost by a 12 round majority decision.

You don’t beat guys when you can’t hard for the full 12 rounds, and that was Morales’ problems. However, that was a lot better performance from Morales than he had looked in his three prior fights where he looked totally shot. Maidana, however, was the perfect fighter for Morales to show his last bit of talent because Maidana doesn’t have much in the way of boxing skills. However, Matthysse does and suspect Morales will go back to looking like the shot fighter he resembled prior to the Maidana fight and lose to Matthysse.

Khan’s predicament is this: He wants the fight against the faded Morales because it’s the easier fight for him compared to a risky one against Matthysse. Morales brings in more fans and Khan’s promoters from Golden Boy Promotions would likely make Khan-Morales a pay per view bout. They can’t really do this with Khan vs. Matthysse because few boxing fans would want to pay to see the still little known Khan vs. Matthysse in the U.S. Matthysse isn’t well known either.

The other problem is Matthysse can really punch and if he gives Khan a beating like Maidana did, we could see Khan hit the deck and get knocked out. I’m sure if Golden Boy would push to have Joe Cortez be the referee for the Khan vs. Matthysse fight, but even with Cortez working the fight I think Khan would have serious problems with Matthysse’s power.

Matthysse doesn’t need to get inside in order to destroy Khan, and so Cortez wouldn’t be much of a factor in this fight compared to the Maidana bout. Khan wants a big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Matthysse would be a real danger to that happening. For this reason I see Khan opting not to fight Matthysse and instead going after the light hitting Lamont Peterson for his December 10th fight. Peterson is a weak slapping puncher, and is Khan’s IBF mandatory challenger, which gives Khan an excuse to fight him instead of Matthysse.