By William Mackay: WBA Super World light welterweight champion Amir Khan is baffled by Marcos Maidana’s refusal to step in and replace Lucas Matthysse for a fight against Erik Morales next week for the vacant WBC light welterweight title on September 17th on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. – Victor Ortiz title fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. Khan says he would have taken the fight if he was in the same situation.
Speaking on his twitter, Khan said “Wow, Maidana refuses to fight Morales on the Mayweather [fight card]. I’d jump at that chance, how could you say no to the WBC world title?”
Khan does have a point. If Maidana wasn’t bound by a contract for his September 23 fight against little known Petr Petrov, then he should have stepped up and accepted the rematch. Some of Maidana’s boxing fans think it would have been foolish for him to do so, as he backed off of training recently after his August 27th opponent Robert Guerrero pulled out of the fight.
However, Maidana is young enough to regroup and be in more than good enough shape to fight the 35-year-old Morales again by September 17th you would think. Maidana already beat Morales last April by a 12 round decision, and is fully aware that he would have to do to beat him again.
Maidana outworked Morales last time, and that’s how you beat Morales nowadays – you outwork him. It would have given Maidana a great chance of picking up another belt and he would have been able to use that belt to mount pressure on Khan to give him a badly needed rematch. Maidana fought Khan last year in December, and had him staggering around in the 10th.
In the last three rounds of the fight, Maidana really battered Khan and perhaps if the referee working the fight Joe Cortez hadn’t broken up the action quite so often when Khan was getting pummeled against the ropes, Maidana would have had a better chance at winning the fight. But of course, if Maidana’s contract with Petrov made it impossible for him o take the rematch with Morales, then what Khan says is of little importance because Maidana would have no freedom to break free of the Petrov fight to face Morales anyway.
It looks as if Khan used this opportunity to take a shot at Maidana, which he likes to do because of the back and forth bickering the two fighters have had since Khan beat Maidana last year. Ideally, Khan should end the squabbling by giving Maidana a rematch, but like with his 1st round lost to Breidis Prescott in 2008, Khan has no interest in going backwards to fight someone like Maidana, preferring instead to fight guys like weak punching Paul McCloskey and an aging Zan Judah.
It’s hard to imagine seeing Judah or McCloskey beating Maidana. Khan is doing his own thing and trying not to get beaten before he gets his big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Don’t expect for Khan to be matched tough until he gets that money fight, and after he gets totally dominated by Mayweather, Khan will likely take it easy for a while with easy fights to get his confidence back. We could likely see Khan matched softly for a year or so and then carefully maneuvered to go after one of the welterweight paper champions like Vyacheslav Senchenko. In other words, Khan will likely be moved to pick up a title against someone without any power. As for Maidana, I can’t see him ever getting another fight with Khan. I think that’s it for him, because Khan has no interest in fighting a rematch with him.
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