By Tim Royner: Amir Khan is hoping to get pushed up the rankings at welterweight after he faces fringe contender Samuel Vargas on September 8 in Birmingham in the UK. Khan, 31, doesn’t like the fact that he’s ranked in in the 154 pound weight class rather than at 147, which is where he wants to be ranked.
Khan (32-4, 20 KOs) will be making his second fight of his comeback against 29-year-old Vargas at the Birmingham Arena in on the 8th of September in a fight that will be shown on Sky Sports in the UK.
The problem that Khan has in in his failure to get ranked is his last two fights have been at junior middleweight in catch-weights at 150 pounds against journeyman Phil Lo Greco and former WBC middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez. It’s Khan’s own doing that he’s not being ranked because he keeps fighting at junior middleweight. However, it doesn’t matter whether Khan is ranked highly or not at 147, his promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing USA can get him a world title shot against pretty much any of the current world champions in the division. Khan can likely fight any of them. As to whether Khan can beat any of them is another thing. The only champion at welterweight that Khan would have a chance of beating is 39-year-old WBA secondary 147 pound champion Manny Pacquiao.
“I want to fight at 147 because I am a welterweight fighter, and I’ve made that clear,” Khan said to skysports.com. “147 is the weight I fight at, and I also want to get high in the world rankings, because the world rankings at the moment are confused what weight I am in.”
At this point, Khan shouldn’t get too concerned with his rankings at welterweight, because he needs to make sure he beats Samuel Vargas (29-3-2, 14 KOs). If Khan loses to Vargas, it’s over with for him. His career will be officially done. None of the champions at welterweight will bother fighting Khan if he gets dusted by Vargas, because he will have been shown to be an over-the-hill fighter, which is exactly how Vargas sees him. He feels that Khan is an older fighter who is past his best.
Khan wants his fight against Vargas to be a war, as he’s hoping to KO him early like he did in stopping Lo Greco in the 1st round in his comeback fight last April.
”If I touch him on the chin, he’s going down,” Vargas said. ”That’s a guarantee. He’s an old man. He’s been hurt before and he’s been stopped many times. I just have to land one punch on his chin. His feet will go all over the place and if he’s still there I’ll hit him again and again,” Vargas said.
Vargas isn’t a big puncher, but he doesn’t need to be. Khan has been hurt even by non-punchers during his career. It doesn’t seem to matter. If Khan is hit squarely by a solid punch, he’s at risk of getting stopped. For that reason, it would be in Khan’s best interest not try and rush Vargas out of there on September 8 like he did in blasting out the hapless Phil Lo Greco in the 1st round in their fight on April 21 in Liverpool, England.
Vargas is right about Khan having been stopped many times. He’s been knocked out badly on three occasions by Briedis Prescott, Danny Garcia and Saul Canelo Alvarez. Khan has also been hurt by several other fighters. Marcos Maidana had Khan out on his feet in their fight in 2010. That was a very strange looking fight. After Maidana hurt Khan in the 10
th, he had the referee literally standing in his career as he was trying to finish him off. If the referee had stayed out of the way, Maidana would have finished Khan off in that round.
“I will be ranked at 147 and I want to see where they put me. I want to win a world title again. There are titles after this one, there are other big fighters out there, but we are taking it one step at a time,” Khan said.
If Hearn can make the fight for Khan against WBA World champion Pacquiao, it’s possible he could defeat the Filipino star. Pacquiao is vulnerable against speedy fighters like Khan. Pacquiao looked good in his last fight against Lucas Matthysse, but that was arguably because he was facing a slow, short guy that was past his best. The 5’8” Khan is taller than Pacquiao, and he has the kind of hand speed to trouble the Filipino fighter. It would be a 50-50 fight. Making the fight is the biggest hurdle Khan faces because his promoter Hearn really wants him to fight Kell Brook in December.
If Hearn drags his feet on purpose with the Khan-Pacquiao negotiations, then it’s easy for that fight to slip through Khan’s fingers. What would be unfortunate about that is Khan could lose out permanently on fighting Pacquiao, because the Filipino fighter is going to be retiring after two or three fights. If Pacquiao or Khan loses to someone in 2018, then a fight between them will lose any real meaning. They’ll both be viewed as shot fighters, which you can argue is how they’re already viewed by the hardcore boxing fans. The casual fans don’t see Khan and Pacquiao as completely shot at this point, but if they lose again, then they might hear the news and lose interest in watching them face each other in 2019.
Khan’s options to fight for a world title at welterweight come down to these fighters:
– Manny Pacquiao – WBA ‘regular’ title
– Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman – WBA Super World belt
– Danny Garcia – potential WBC champ
– Shawn Porter – potential WBC champ
– Errol Spence Jr. – IBF champion
– Terence Crawford – WBO champion
Khan has a lot of options for him to fight for a world title. There’s little doubt that he can get a world title shot in the near future as long as he doesn’t lose to Samuel Vargas or Brook First. Hearn is likely going to get his way in matching Khan against Brook. If that fight happens, it could be over with for Khan, because Brook will use his punching power and size to stop him. Brook is a small junior middleweight, and he’s always been. Brook has been able o melt down to 147 throughout his career to fight smaller guys than himself and enjoy a size advantage. It wasn’t until recently that Brook finally moved up to 154. If the Khan-Brook fight happens in December, it’ll be a 147. A win for Khan will get him pushed up the rankings at welterweight and help him get the title shot that he craves so badly. Unless Brook is badly weight drained in going back down to 147, he’s going to be a nightmare for Khan. It would be a major upset for Khan to defeat a guy like Brook, and I get the feeling that Khan knows this. If he felt he could beat Brook, he would have likely fought him a long time ago. Khan should continue to put the fight with Brook on hold until he faces Pacquiao. Once that fight is done, then Khan can always face Brook in a cash out fight.
With Khan’s hand speed, he’s one of those guys that would be capable of potentially beat some of the top fighters in the welterweight division. It’s just that he would lose to a lot of them still. Khan still has enough hand speed to where he could blitz one of the top fighters if he unloads on them with a flurry of punches in the same way he did against Lo Greco in stopping him in the 1st round last April.