By Michael Collins: Not only will WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (23-0, 14 KO’s) have his WBC title on the line for his first title defense next month against Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) on July 14th, but also the WBA light welterweight title will be on the line for the fight. For boxing who don’t remember, the WBA title is Khan’s old strap that he recently lost in a 12 round decision to Lamont Peterson last December. Peterson has since tested positive for synthetic testosterone, although he didn’t test positive on the night that he beat Khan.
After it was learned that Peterson tested positive for testosterone, Khan’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions appealed to the IBF and WBA to have his titles returned to him. The IBF has yet to budge on stripping Peterson, but the WBA has decided to make the WBA title available for Khan and Garcia to fight over. As such, this makes the fight a unification bout, and gives the fight a tiny bit more importance. To be honest, it won’t help the fight that much because there simply are far too many titles in each division, and it doesn’t change the fight much other than something for the television talking heads to bring up before and during the fight. Khan was still beaten by Peterson, and he still looked pretty bad in the way he shoved, and pulled down on Peterson’s head all night long to escape the inside pressure from him.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer told RingTV “I’ve got verbal confirmation that the WBA is going to have Amir fight for the WBA title, so that’s that…So their fight will be for two belts.”
Garcia is being allowed to bypass his mandatory title defense against Ajose Alusegun now that the fight is a unification bout. I imagine Olusegun isn’t too happy with being skipped over. The good news is that he’ll be able to fight for the vacant titles if Khan wins the titles, because he plans on vacating them anyway so he can move up in weight to fight at welterweight. With Khan not even interested in sticking it out to fight at 140, it hardly sees worth it to have the WBA title on the line in the first place. It’s not like he’s trying to avenge his loss to Peterson or anything. What good is fighting for a vacant title that was stripped from the guy that beat him?