By William Mackay: Golden Boy Promotions and Frank Warren did a great job of getting Amir Khan’s career back on the right track after he was viciously knocked out in the 1st round by Breidis Prescott in 2008 by mostly matching Khan up against light hitters or older guys.

The exception during this time was Marcos Maidana, who almost knocked Khan out in 2010 and perhaps might have done just that had the referee working the fight not broken up the action so many times when Khan was battered in the 10th.

After the loss to Prescott, Khan won his next eight fights and seemed to be getting a little cocky when he was beaten again, this time by Lamont Peterson last December. Khan, with the help of his promoters at Golden Boy, was able to make a number of excuses for for the defeat and the excuses eventually stuck with the public after it was learned that Peterson had tested positive for synthetic testosterone recently. But the excuses went up in smoke in Khan’s last fight in losing a 4th round TKO defeat to WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia on July 14th earlier this month.

If Golden Boy wants to bring Khan back again they’re going to have to start carefully matching him against guys that he can actually beat. He can’t keep fighting sluggers right now because they seem to be too dangerous for him, and you can’t guarantee that a referee will step in and break up the action if Khan starts getting pummeled like he was in the Maidana fight.

Right now, Khan needs one of these guys to fight next:

Robert Guerrero
Zab Judah
Joan Guzman
Brandon Rios
Humberto Soto

Golden Boy Promotions isn’t going to put Khan in with a complete nobody, because they after all have to sell tickets and if they match him too softly, HBO will likely say no the mismatch.