Two defeats in his last three fights have not dissuaded Amir Khan from thinking big.
Victory against Julio Diaz on Saturday night would give him the opportunity to become undisputed light-welterweight champion later this year, Khan said in London on Thursday.
The 26-year-old Briton must first win the catchweight non-title bout against Diaz at the Motorpoint Arena in his home city of Sheffield in his first fight back in Britain for two years.
Victory over Diaz, a former lightweight champion, will keep Khan on course for a possible rematch with either Lamont Peterson or Danny Garcia. Defeat to the 33-year-old Diaz will finish Khan's career at the elite level.
Khan, who is due to get married in New York next month, is desperate to avenge both defeats.
He lost on points to Peterson in December 2011. Garcia stopped Khan in four rounds last July. IBF champion Peterson and Garcia, who holds the WBC and WBA titles, have defences to make before Khan can start plotting revenge.
Garcia takes on fellow American Zab Judah later on Saturday night and Argentina's Lucas Matthysse is set to challenge Peterson on May 18.
Khan says he has been told by his promoter, Golden Boy, that the winners of those fights will then face each other and the winner of the title unification fight will box him later in 2013.
"I must keep winning and work my way back to the world titles," Khan said. "I'm determined to win them again.
"I'm staying at light-welterweight because I want to fight Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia again. I have unfinished business with them and want to avenge my losses.
"This fight will take me to a world title shot, hopefully in my next bout. Julio has a good KO ratio. I have a lot of respect for him for accepting this challenge. He is an experienced fighter and they are the difficult ones to beat.
While Khan sees his future at the 63.5kg light-welterweight division, he was surprisingly elevated to No 2 on the WBC welterweight rankings list recently.
His defeats dashed Khan's hopes of facing Floyd Mayweather, the American who holds the WBC welterweight title. But Khan has not given up on a future fight with Mayweather.
"I have to take care of the light-welterweight division first. I want to clean it up and get revenge on either Garcia or Peterson later this year," he said.
"I will fight twice this year because (the Muslim holy month of) Ramadan is in the middle of the year. Then I will move up to a super fight at welterweight next year.
"Mayweather is still possible. Not many people are in the same league but as long as I don't make many any more mistakes, then why not?"
Diaz is the second fight for Khan since suffering a third professional defeat to Garcia in July last year. Khan's dominant win over Carlos Molina in December was his first training with coach Virgil Hunter in San Francisco, California.
He said Hunter helped him to work on his defence, making him a more complete fighter.
