Schaefer believes that Amir Khan will be the “best and riches by the end of 2011

Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer believes that his fighter World Boxing Association junior welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) will be the “best and richest fighter” by the end of 2011, according to the Mirror.co.uk. This is a huge compliment that Schaefer is making towards Khan because Schaefer and Golden Boy Promotions has a number of talented fighters in their stable and ones that are a lot proven against top echelon opposition than Khan is at this early point in his career. Schaefer is making this prediction off of Khan’s wins over a handful of decent lightweight and light welterweight fighters. Khan still hasn’t proven that he can beat a fighter with huge talent and big power. He failed once in a fight against the slugger Breidis Prescott in a 1st round knockout loss in 2008, and his handlers have been slow in putting him back in with anyone who has any kind of punch. If Khan can prove that his chin has improved enough to beat fighters like Marcos Maidana, Prescott, Victor Ortiz and Devon Alexander, it would be much easier to understand Schaefer’s extreme optimism about Khan’s future. But right now, Khan is still largely unproven and has a lot of questions still unanswered about him after his loss to Prescott. Khan recently defeated former IBF junior welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi in an 11th round TKO victory on May 15th, but Malignaggi can’t punch, and seems to have been selected specifically for that reason so as not to be a threat to Khan’s sometimes weak chin. Schaefer says “Khan, the speed, the power, the commitment – he is the future.” That may be, but it might be a disappointing and frustrating future for boxing fans if Khan is kept away from big punchers and fighters with a high degree of talent like Timothy Bradley and Alexander. Khan can only go so far being matched up against fighters like Dmitri Salita, Malignaggi and Andriy Kotelnik, you would think. There’s no meat in Khan’s resume right now to get excited in the same way as Schaefer is getting. If you had matched Bradley, Maidana, Ortiz and Alexander against the same opposition that Khan has been put in with, there would be an excellent chance that they would have an even better record than Khan right now and would be unbeaten. No doubt that Maidana did lose a 12 round decision to Kotelnik in the past, but the fight took place in Germany where Kotelnik fights, and it appeared to be a win for Maidana in the minds of many boxing fans, including this writer. I think Khan is a good fighter but you can’t really say how good he is until he finally fights someone. I would tend to want to wait to see how Khan does against Bradley, Alexander and Maidana – if he ever fights any of them – before I would start crowing about how good and how rich Khan will be in the future. That just puts a lot of pressure on Khan before he’s even proven that he can compete, much less win. I do think that Khan will be a very rich fighter, because he’s making big bank just facing soft punchers like Malignaggi. I guess it doesn’t take a popular opponent for Khan to make a lot of money in the ring. This is kind of like WBA heavyweight champion David Haye, who also gets paid really well even in fights against opponents that aren’t much of a threat to him.