Boxing: Khan Looks for Double-quick Advance

Amir Khan may fight twice at Preston Guildhall tonight when the East Lancs and East Cheshire Amateur Boxing Association provides the first leg of what the 18-year-old Olympic silver medallist is hoping will be a progression to the English Amateur Boxing Association senior finals in London next month.

It will be Khan's first competitive action against a British opponent for almost two years and he has announced that he is no longer able to make the 60kg lightweight classification in which he won his Athens medal and will compete instead as a 64kg light- welterweight.

"It isn't that he isn't in shape or hasn't been training," said the ABA spokesman Ron Boddy. "You have to remember that, for all the fame he has attained in winning his medal, Amir is still a growing lad. So it is seen as a natural step for him to be moving up in weight category."

Khan's opposition tonight will be drawn from a pool of qualifiers after the fighters are first weighed in, and the Bury Amateur Boxing Club prodigy should have little difficulty reaching the next stage, the Association Finals held at Liverpool Olympia on February 18.

Speculation continues to grow that Khan will stay amateur only long enough to fight in the ABA finals at the ExCel Centre in London on March 18, with a possible final appearance in April when he is hoping to be the main attraction in an event at an indoor arena at Bolton Wanderers' Reebok Stadium, where profits will secure the financial future of Bury ABC.

No announcement has been made about which promoter will guide Khan's career. Barry Hearn, Robert Waterman and his business partner Dennis Hobson, and the former world featherweight champion Naseem Hamed are all believed to have made substantial offers but Frank Warren remains the favourite.

Warren has played down rumours that Khan will make his professional debut as a support act on the sell-out Kostya Tszyu-Ricky Hatton world light-welterweight title bill at Manchester's MEN Arena on June 4.

The undisputed world welterweight title changed hands at the Savvis Center in St Louis when Zab Judah stopped the hometown favourite Cory Spinks after flooring him in the ninth round. Judah was in control from the seventh round onwards and said afterwards: "He made a big mistake when he signed a contract for the fight."

Although the promoter Don King may stage a rematch, Judah is also being linked with a possible meeting with the winner of Hatton and Tszyu.