Amir Khan is fighting to ensure his 'final chapter' ends with a flourish

In spite of all he has been through, you sense there is still more to be written in the Khan story

Eddie Hearn believes Amir Khan's legacy will stand the test of time (Getty)

Amir Khan carries the sort of physical and mental scars in keeping with a boxing career which began long before he captured the hearts of a nation as a skinny 17-year-old kid in Athens 14 years back.

He's mature now, hardened to the sport, but it has taken a toll. As he talks, attention is drawn to his right hand, which is punctuated by two long, thick pink lines – evidence of numerous operations on one of his primary tools.

It means the right hand appears substantially larger than the left. At one point surgeons even reconstructed part of it with bone taken from his hip. Put simply, it is the sort of injury which has ended many careers before.

But still Khan presses on. Victory in Saturday's clash with 10/1 outsider Samuel Vargas in Birmingham is expected to open the door for a lucrative bout with either British rival Kell Brook or boxing royalty Manny Pacquiao, potentially before the end of the year.

Both bank account and legacy would receive a significant boost in victory against either of those with Khan, as he puts it, now writing his 'final chapter'. He stopped short, however, of agreeing that he is playing the 'end game'.

“An end game would be where your body has peaked and you're fighting for the wrong reasons,” 31-year-old Khan says. “I'm still doing it because I love the sport and because I feel like I have a lot left in me.

“This is my final chapter but I feel better now than I did when I was 28, that's the reason why I've come back. Otherwise I would have called it a day and said 'no thank you'.”

Khan has spent just 18 minutes and 16 seconds in the professional prize ring in the past 39 months as his life has blurred the line between athlete and celebrity.

His stint on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here was just one example of why his exploits routinely ended up in the front of the book rather than the back, but Khan insists that was never the plan.

Amir Khan talks to the media during a press conference (Getty Images)

“The thing is," he says before pausing. "I need boxing. Boxing keeps my mind relaxed. It keeps me thinking straight and thinking right. When I was away from boxing, I was lost. Boxing is what I need.

“I had so much energy that I was doing silly things. It was then that I thought 'I need to divert it back into boxing'.”

He ended his two-year absence from the sport, briefly, when he charged through Phil Lo Greco in just 39 seconds at Liverpool's Echo Arena on 21 April. Vargas, who is 29-3-2, is expected to provide more resistance at the very least.

In fact, the Colombia-born Canadian insists he is in England's second city to end Khan's career. His confidence gleaned by the three stoppage defeats on Khan's record which have earned him the unwanted reputation as 'chinny'.

Vargas' trainer, Chris Johnson, suggested that Khan should have hung up his gloves immediately after he was brutally rendered unconscious by Saul Alvarez in Las Vegas in 2016. “How do you prepare a fighter for war after he's been damaged? The brain is not the same,” Johnson said.

In reality, Khan's chin is not as bad as many members of the fighting public would have you believe. You could argue the then 21-year-old was simply caught cold by big-punching Breidis Prescott back in 2008 or that the left hook with which Danny Garcia ended him in 2012 would have seen off most other light-welterweights at the time.

Amir Khan has spent just 18 minutes and 16 seconds in the ring over the past 39 months (Getty)

The Bolton man now admits he should never have jumped into the 155lb catchweight fight with Alvarez, which ended so hideously, but his pension fund might not agree.

However, without a successful closing chapter, it is likely that the achievements of the former unified world champion and Olympic silver medalist will always be undermined by the perceived fragility of his chin.

“What I've done in British boxing is what most fighters have never done before,” Khan counters. “Winning world titles, headlining in Vegas at the MGM, fighting the best out there.

“Really, I've done it all. So what's left? Win another world title? That's something I've already done. I just want to fight the best, beat the best and be remembered as a great fighter.

“But we have to get past this fight first before we talk about Manny Pacquiao or anyone else.”

The man tasked with delivering another of Khan's defining nights is promoter Eddie Hearn, who has spent years trying to arrange that Battle of Britain with another of his stable's stars in Brook.

Talk of a fight against Manny Pacquiao has surfaced (Getty)

Even without it, Hearn believes Khan's legacy will stand the test of time.

“He should be remembered as a great of British boxing,” Hearn told The Independent. “We're a funny old nation in that when people start doing well, you don't quite get the support you did when you weren't doing well.

“Like when Frank Bruno won the heavyweight title it was like his popularity decreased, which is unbelievable.

“Just look on paper at what Amir Khan has achieved, he has to go down as a British great. He goes down as a trailblazer as well. He forced the funding at an amateur level because of what he did in Athens.

“He won world titles, went over to the States, headlined over there. You have to admire what he's achieved and he's still here.

"He might be better than ever and we will see a glimpse on Saturday. Then I see him having three or four more fights left.

“But if he goes in there and looks poor, he might just walk away.”

You sense, however, there is still more to be written in the Amir Khan story.