By William Mackay: IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan came out and finally said it that this Saturday’s fight against Lamont Peterson will be his last fight at 140lbs. Khan plans on moving up in weight immediately after this fight to the welterweight division (147lbs) and he hopes to get a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. shortly after he moves up in weight next year. Khan was asked in an interview by MMA Nation whether he would be agreeable to a fight against Miguel Cotto and Khan said “Yeah, definitely, I’d fight him at 147.”

Obviously a fight between Khan and Cotto wouldn’t be on the plate in his first fight at welterweight, because Golden Boy Promotions will likely match Khan against another soft target with a name, someone one like 40-year-old Shane Mosley. They won’t put Khan immediately in with Cotto, if they could even make the fight. Cotto fights for Top Rank and the two promotional companies rarely pit their fighters against each other.

Khan would have a lot of problems with Cotto’s size and power, because he hits harder than the guys Khan has been facing and he’s used to fighting wars. The closest Khan has come to a war was his win over Marcos Maidana in December 2010, but Khan ran the entire fight until running out of gas in the 10th and taking a lot of punishment in the last three rounds. Golden Boy won’t want to put Khan in that kind of fight because he’s not a rugged fighter and he would have no inkling of what would be in store for him when Cotto cuts off the ring and forces him to fight.

Despite not having fought some of the very best fighters in the light welterweight division, Khan has pronounced himself as the best fighter at this weight and is ready to move up, saying “No more tests at this weight. We’ve proven that we’re the best in this division. And there’s no one touching us…We get past Lamont Peterson and then there’s super fights at 147.”

Khan’s big wins at 140 have come against the following fighters:

Paul McCloskey
Zab Judah
Marcos Maidana
Andriy Kotelnik
Paulie Malignaggi
Dmitriy Salita

Here are the fighters that Khan hasn’t fought at 140:

Timothy Bradley
Lucas Matthysse
Mike Alvarado
Ajose Olusegun
Humberto Soto
Erik Morales
Danny Garcia

I don’t know how Khan can say he’s proven he’s the best fighter at 140 when he’s still not faced seven of the biggest threats in the division, and five of those fighters can really punch.

If you look at the six fighters that Khan faced at 140, only one of them – Maidana – has any punching power. All the rest of them were light punchers. You see a trend here. Khan moves up without facing five big punchers in the light welterweight division and says he’s there are no more tests for him at that weight. I think what he should be saying is there are no more light punchers for him to pick over, because all the rest are dangerous.