Is Amir Khan Finished As a Fighter?

By Boxing News - 09/08/2008 - Comments

khan5235743.jpgBy Sean McDaniel: Sometimes all it takes is one punch and a fighter is for all practical purposes washed up for good. In the case of previously unbeaten Amir Khan, I think he may be already at that stage of his career when it’s time to consider retiring for good. What’s sad, at least to me, is that all it took was a hard jab from his powerful Colombian opponent Breidis Prescott (20-0, 18 KOs), who staggered Khan in the opening seconds of the bout. To say that Khan was being more than a little thick headed by mixing it up with Prescott in the opening seconds is being too kind to him.

No one in their right mind would even consider going right after a fighter with as much as Prescott. Regardless of how limited Prescott is as a fighter, his power is very much real indeed, and anyone with two eyes could see that for themselves by taking a glance of his last fight with Cuban amateur star Richard Abril. The knockout loss for Khan was merely a byproduct of him going out there and trying to tangle with someone that he needed to be handling with kid’s gloves. Prescott is a fighter you need to stay away from, not try to engage and slug with. Of course, there’s fighters that probably could do this, like Nate Campbell or Juan Diaz, but then again they’re clearly a class or two above Khan in terms of chin and overall boxing skills.

Khan merely has youth and speed working for him, which is why it seems so insane for him to have negated those attributes by going right after Prescott and trying to beat him at his own game.

As the saying goes, ‘you never want to slug with a slugger,’ a lesson that Khan should have heeded going into his fight with Prescott. Afterwards, Khan mentioned getting caught up in the excitement of the large crowd, and wanted to mix it up with Prescott, perhaps wanting to prove that he could trade shots with him early on. Whatever his reasoning were, it wasn’t something that he was probably advised to do by anyone, because I can’t see the logic in making a risky decision like this. What’s done is down, however. Khan has now been beaten and beaten badly, knocked down twice in the first round by Prescott and taken a major hit to his credibility as a fighter.

The effects, both mental and physical, of the knockout are yet to be determined at this early point. What we do know, however, is that Khan has been hurt three times in his professional career, twice by average punchers and lastly by the powerful Prescott. In earlier bouts, Khan took shots from C-class fighters and looked uncomfortable, almost-looking worried when taking the hits. This leaves me with the question in my mind whether Khan will ever recover from this knockout and be the fighter that he was thought to be after winning an Olympic Silver medal in 2004.

His speed, of course, will still remain for quite some time as he’s still young, only 21, but his chin may not be the same it once was. I can see him having additional problems in the future when he’s eventually matched up with a big hitter of one kind or another. To take it one step further, I’m concerned whether he’ll be able to take a decent punch from a weaker fighter C-class fighter at this point, because as most people already know, once an athlete suffers a concussion, they sometimes or prone to suffer more of them in the future without much of an impact.

In Khan’s case, he might be risking this if he continues fighting. He’s probably already accumulated a nice nest egg from his 19 fights as a professional boxer; He might want to consider walking away from the sport before he suffers permanent injury to his brain. I personally don’t think he can take a big punch anymore, or perhaps never could, and if he wants to eventually win a title in the lightweight division, he’ll no doubt have to take many big shots from fighters even better than Prescott.

This was a fighter that Khan should have been able to beat, because I don’t see him as being in the true A-class of the lightweight division, yet he made Khan look like a rag muffin in the ring. That’s not a good sign for Khan, who would possibly seeing the same problems for himself if he ever steps it up again against better opponents in the division like Campbell, Juan Diaz or Michael Katsidis.



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