As much as we boxing fans love the sport, very few of us enjoy the nature of modern-day matchmaking.

Unlike most sports, whose contests and honours are decided on very rigid and transparent formats, pugilistic promoters yield all the power to freely decide for and against the bouts that eventually take place, all behind a smokescreen of frustration for the audience.

British former world champion Amir Khan has been the subject of much of this back-and-forth over recent years.

On the one hand, he has spent the last three years chasing a lucrative showdown with pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather, who is adamant he has boxed for the final time after going 49-0 against Andre Berto, to no avail.

On the other hand, the public consensus is that Khan’s team have perpetrated the same cat-and-mouse game with his longtime British welterweight rival Kell Brook, who is now a world titlist in his own right.

As with most quests for clarity, the truth appears a lot more straightforward when you are able to speak directly to the athlete himself, rather than attempt to decipher tedious social media squabbles between opposing representatives.

Khan took the time during a busy day of training and promotional work to speak to Yahoo Sport UK about not only his next fight, but his next THREE – not to mention his relationship with current trainer Virgil Hunter, the Mayweather fiasco, observing Ramadan as a professional athlete and, finally, whether or not he will indeed face Brook one-on-one eventually.

The Bolton boxer wasted no time making it clear what he wants next – a rematch with Danny Garcia, who KO'd Khan in an explosive fight in 2012.

“I’d like to have the rematch,” Khan told us, courtesy of his official nutritional suppliers MaxiNutrition. “I think it would be a good fight for me and for the fans, so we’re trying to make it materialise.

“I’ve been asking for that fight ever since I lost the first time against Danny and I never really got the chance to make it happen, but now I’m hopeful that I’ll get the chance to settle the score.”

Should Garcia take such a fight, having won the first quite decisively? Yes, explained Khan, because it not could not only benefit the Brit, but also the stalling momentum of the unbeaten American.

“Regardless of the result, Khan-Garcia II would be an exciting fight,” he continued. “I want to give boxing fans what they want, and because I have unfinished business with Danny, of course I really want the fight.

“I know Danny won our first fight but to be honest, he hasn’t done much since that great win over Lucas Matthysse in 2013. He hasn’t really moved forward since then, while I’ve learned from my mistakes and improved – so a rematch would be very interesting.

“He’s moved up in weight from light-welter to welter now, and maybe that will work out for him. Maybe he was breaking his back trying to make light-welterweight. This means there’ll be no excuses for either of us in a second fight.

“We’ll both be at a better weight, we’re different fighters than we were in 2012 and it should be an even better fight.”

Khan’s camp are actually working on his next two fights at the same time – because while Amir is keen to fight once more before 2015 is out, there’s one other huge opportunity to hunt in the wake of Floyd’s retirement (for the time being) – Manny Pacquiao.

Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum recently indicated that Pacquiao will be fully healed from his shoulder injury in time to fight in May 2016 – and that it could well be the Filipino legend’s final bout – so Khan is equally eager to make sure that bout is against him.

“At the moment, our #1 priority is making a fight with Manny Pacquiao happen,” Khan said, “so hopefully I’ll be fighting in December and then Pacquiao next May.

“We’ve spoken to a few potential opponents for December, but a rematch with Garcia around then would be great. It’s still 14 weeks away so it’s a possibility.”

As interesting as those two bouts would be, the British audience is frothing at the mouth for Khan and Brook to finally turn years of verbal disputes over who is the better welterweight into a huge domestic showdown.

He explained: “There’s a good chance those next two fights will happen in the States, but I would like to fight again in the UK soon.

“To be honest, I think if I do fight again in Britain, it would be the Kell Brook fight. It would be great to make that happen late next year.”

So, after months of confusion and speculation thanks to promoters such as Eddie Hearn, we asked Khan point blank if he will, one day, fight Kell. No maybes, yes or no.

His answer was very encouraging – and he assured the British fans that their patience will pay off eventually.

“The Kell Brook fight will definitely happen,” he said. “We want it to happen, we really do.

“What we want first is for Kell to get a couple more top fights under his belt, and take on a couple more top-class opponents. If he does that, Brook v Khan becomes an even bigger fight when it happens.

“I’d love to see Kell go into the ring with the likes of Tim Bradley, Juan Marquez, and beat those kinds of guys. If he beats more guys at the highest level like I have, we will make more money, the fans will get a bigger fight and of course that works out for everyone.

“If Brook has a few more top fights between now and late 2016, and I’m able to get Garcia and Pacquiao, I really think Kell and I could follow in the footsteps of Froch-Groves II and sell out Wembley Stadium.

“That would be massive, so I know Brook v Khan is something boxing fans want, and we really feel it will work for next year when it’s the biggest fight it possibly can be.

“We both know it’s a huge British fight that can happen in Britain, and it will be massive for both of us, when the time is right.”

“If we’re able to make it happen so that I get a rematch with Danny Garcia in December, Manny Pacquiao in May and then Kell Brook late next year in Wembley, that would be absolutely amazing.

“Not only that but if we can line up those three fights and I can emerge victorious from them all, that would put me very high in the pound-for-pound rankings, especially now Floyd Mayweather says he is done.”

Mayweather opting not to pursue several intriguing potential opponents – including Khan – is a source of much frustration for fight sport diehards, especially with his career seemingly ending with such an anti-climax of a win over Berto.

Khan was philosophical about the wild goose chase he endured thanks to ‘Money’, and even indicated that the Berto fight’s widely-predicted commercial failure proves what he has been saying about Floyd from the start.

“Mayweather’s camp have used my observation of Ramadan as an excuse in the past, because it makes being ready for a fight in September very difficult for me. It’s a shame, and I’m disappointed that they always had an excuse not to have Floyd fight me.

“The fight never happened, and I really feel he never considered me because he didn’t want to fight someone like me, someone who fights differently to his usual opponent and who can cause him some problems.

“The fight not happening for me suggests that he thought I could beat him. If you look at his last fight against Andre Berto, the PPV buys Stateside were very, very bad. The fight performed really poorly financially because nobody was interested. Had he fought me, it would have done much better than it did.

“For someone like Mayweather, who boasts about how much he loves to make tons of money, to be happy to make a lot less against Berto in September than against me later in the year tells me that he was only interesting in staying unbeaten at all costs, even if some of his fights were not interesting.

“I’m a bigger name than Berto, I’ve fought better opponents than Berto and I’ve fought on a higher level than Berto. Floyd picking the lesser fight and missing out on extra money says it all, really.

“Mayweather leaves this sport unbeaten, but honestly, that’s because he didn’t take some risky fights along the way. He is very, very smart and knows who to pick and when to pick for his opponents.”

Khan has a point – Ramadan, an extremely important religious ritual, should not be regarded as a deal-breaker – especially by a fighter who for no genuine reason insists on fighting in early May and mid-September, like clockwork.

But it does beg the question: how difficult is observing Ramadan for an athlete whose day-to-day routine is so strict, so crucial?

“Keeping in the best possible shape whilst observing Ramadan, for a boxer, isn’t easy,” Khan admitted. “You have to take that month or two months to one side, and I try to make sure I’m back to full strength as quickly as possible.

“It’s also why I only fight once or twice a year – Ramadan literally falls right in the middle of the year. If it were very early or very late in the year I could maybe look at two or three fights per year but as a Muslim, you want to make the most of Ramadan and it’s once a year.

“Although it isn’t easy, it’s still very manageable and although most boxers look at two or three fights a year once they reach world championship level, it’s not a problem gearing towards two rather than three for me.”

Mayweather’s much-debated status as an undefeated fighter also raises the question: does an unblemished record really make a boxer automatically superior to someone who has tasted defeat more than once?

Not if you look through history, says Khan.

“I’ve lost fights, but so have all but a minority of fighters. Carl Froch lost fights, Manny Pacquiao lost fights, but their reputations are excellent and rightfully so.

“What’s more important in boxing is how you come back from losing a fight. Losing fights has only made me a better fighter. You analyse yourself after a defeat in ways you don’t after a win. You look to change things and improve your game.

“It’s a good thing to lose, sometimes, because you go back to the drawing board and fix problems, and you fight with more focus going forward.

“Obviously no boxer wants to lose, but unbeaten fighters reach a stage where they are convinced by their guys that they’re invincible, and they do everything it takes to protect their invincible reputation like Mayweather has at the expense of the boxing fans, or they end up hitting a wall when they lose.

“If you look at some great British fighters such as Ricky Hatton and Naseem Hamed, for instance, they were brilliant fighters but when they lost for the first time they hit a wall. They were never the same fighter as before. They don’t know how to come back from a loss.

“Because I’ve tasted defeat early on, as well as at the top level, I know how to come back from defeat and that’s exactly what I’ve done.”

That defeat to Garcia three years ago sparked Khan’s decision to switch trainers from Freddie Roach to Virgil Hunter.

While both are world-class boxing trainers, Khan’s all-round game is improving under Hunter, and Khan says Virgil’s strict nutritional regime has really boosted him.

He said: “My conditioning has improved a lot over the last few years under Virgil because he is very big on nutrition and likes to make sure his boxers have the very best nutritional programmes.

“He believes it gives fighters an advantage when they’re very strict about what they consume, and of course he wants his fighters to have as many advantages as possible in both training and in the ring. This is one of the reasons I always make sure I have MaxiNutrition supplements when I’m in training camp.

“Virgil is a best trainer and he always brings the best out of me. He teaches me a lot in areas of my game that he thinks need some work.”

Amir Khan is an ambassador for MaxiNutrition – the sports nutrition product which is recommended by experts and chosen by champions. To find out more, visit www.maxinutrition.com