By William Mackay: HBO has reportedly rejected another one of Golden Boy Promotions choices for an opponent for Amir Khan’s next fight on December 15th. HBO has already said no to 36-year-old Joan Guzman, and now they’re rejecting Humberto Soto, a former WBC lightweight champion, who is coming off of a 5th round stoppage loss to Lucas Matthysse in his last fight.

According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, HBO didn’t want to put together a fight between two fighters – Khan and Soto – who both had been knocked out in their last fights. It does make a lot of sense. That would be a terrible fight, especially with how bad Soto looked in moving up in weight to light welterweight in his last fight. Soto doesn’t look like he belongs at 140, and he needs to think about moving back down to at least 135 to try and recapture a world title.

Khan’s contract with HBO has run out, Rafael says, but HBO still is interested in showing his next fight provided that it’s against someone that they approve. This puts Golden Boy and Khan in a bind, because traditionally when a fighter gets starched as bad as Khan did in getting stopped in the 4th round by Danny Garcia last July, that fighter is given a soft touch in his next fight. But with Golden Boy still insisting that Khan is a top of the card fighter, then it puts him in a situation where he can’t fight a fluff opponent. He’s got to fight someone good for HBO to approve of the fight.

Just because Khan was knocked out in his last fight you can’t expect HBO to drop their standards and let Khan fight just anybody. We’ve already see Khan take plenty of easy fights against the like Paul McCloskey, Paulie Malignaggi and a past his prime Zab Judah. Khan will likely have to fight someone good if his next fight on December 15th will be televised by HBO.

Here are some options for Khan:

Lucas Matthysse
Mike Alvarado
Brandon Rios
Olusegun Ajose
Marcos Maidana
Jessie Vargas
Josesito Lopez
Tim Bradley
Kendall Holt
Ruslan Provodnikov

I think HBO needs to insist on Khan fighting one of these fighters. Anything less than this, then I don’t think HBO should agree to televise Khan’s next fight. They’re not in the business of showing poor quality fights, and I don’t think they should start now judge because Khan was knocked out in his last fight. It’s got to be the best or nothing at all.