Amir Khan played down the possibility of facing Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao in the future.
Khan, who holds the WBA light welterweight title, trains with Pacquiao under Freddie Roach at the Wild Card gym in Los Angeles and the pair have sparred together regularly. As a result talk has inevitably turned towards the two facing each other in the ring.
The Bolton boxer praised his stable mate for his record-breaking victory over WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto in Las Vegas on Saturday, but admitted that it is unlikely he would face the pound-for-pound star.
"Me and Manny train together, we have the same trainer and everything. I totally respect him and what a great performance he produced at the weekend.
"He was amazing, I was there to watch the fight and it inspires you. When you see a great champion do that and think about the fact I was training with the guy for five weeks, to pick up even a little bit of experience from that is going to help me in my career.
"But as for fighting him in the future, I can't really see that happening because I'm sure by the time I get to that level he will probably be calling it a day.
"We train in the same camp and I've got too much respect for Manny to fight him."
The 22-year-old Olympic silver medallist joined forces with trainer Roach last year following a devastating knockout defeat by Breidis Prescott. Since then, however, he has bounced back in style and won the WBA title from Andreas Kotelnik in the summer.
And ahead of his December 5 defence against Dmitriy Salita, Khan insists joining Roach in California was the best decision of his career.
"It's the best thing I've done," he said. "I've got away from all the distractions, I'm totally focused, I get up in the morning to do my run, I go to the boxing gym to do my training and the main thing is I can have a rest in between training whereas in England, I'm always left, right and centre, doing this and that. At least now I've got a break between training."
The young Lancastrian expects a stiff test from New York-based Ukrainian Salita.
"He's a good operator," said Khan. "He's skilful, has good movement, he's quite quick. He's got hand speed and he's known as a great fighter.
"He's had 30 fights and one draw so I have to be careful in this fight, I can't make any mistakes. Freddie and I have got a game plan to go in there and beat this guy. I can see it being a very technical fight."
