By William Mackay: Responding to a twitter post from IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan where Khan pointed out that Maidana has rarely been fighting top 10 guys for the past couple of years, Marcos Maidana responded back with his views on the guys that Khan has been fighting as of late, saying “See some of Khan’s rivals: Oisin Fagan, semi-retired [Marco Antonio] Barrera, [Andriy] Kotelnik 3 months after I fought him, Dimitriy Salita & washed up [Zab] Judah. Wow!”

Maidana has a point there. Judah does appear to be over the hill, and Khan did face Kotelnik after Maidana gave the Ukrainian a vicious beating first. Although Maidana lost the fight to Kotelnik by a 12 round decision, a lot of boxing fans saw that as Kotelnik winning a hometown decision. Khan’s win over Barrera came at the later stages in Barrera’s career, and it wasn’t much of a win because the fight was halted in the 5th because of a bad cut that Barrera had suffered in the 2nd round of the fight.

Barrera had to fight with blood constantly dripping into his eyes in a fight that really should have been stopped immediately after the headbutt occurred. Khan fought Salita, who the World Boxing Association ranked at number #1 despite Salita having never fought a 1st tier fighter before. It was a weird ranking by the WBA, and sure enough, Khan easily beat Salita, who is no longer ranked in the top 15, let alone at number #1. The Judah fight came against an aging Judah, who really should have lost to Lucas Matthysse a year earlier to be weeded out of the Khan fight. Judah had looked horrible before the Khan fight, and it’s not a surprise he stunk up the joint against Khan. It was great matchmaking by Khan’s promoters to put him in with Judah, though.