By Scott Gilfoid: British lightweight Amir Khan (18-1, 14 KOs) returns to the ring on December 6th against a still unnamed opponent. Khan, 21, is hoping to fight on the undercard of Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Khan, ranked number #8 in the IBF, was brutally stopped in the 1st round by Breidis Prescott in September. Khan appeared to go into the fight thinking knockout, and went right after the Colombian knockout artist in the first round, rather than staying away from him on the outside.

While trying to land a left hook, Khan left himself open for one of Prescott’s big trademark left hooks, which caught Khan on the jaw, snapping his head back violently and staggering him badly. Prescott then went after him and dropped Khan with additional left hooks to the head. Khan somehow got up off the canvas but was immediately put back down again. The outcome of the fight wasn’t that big of a surprise, however, considering that Khan had been dropped twice before this against Willie Limond and Michael Gomez – two punchers with good but not great power. It seemed only obvious when watching those two fights, that Khan would eventually run into a punch that he couldn’t get up from.

His fans, many of them blind with loyalty for him, refused to see that Khan had a major weakness when it came to his ability to take a big punch without going down. Indeed, there was talk by many of his legions of fans about Khan challenging for the lightweight title against Nate Campbell, and incredibly many of his fans felt that he would beat Campbell. Thankfully, Khan never got to that level, because I fear that Campbell may have ended up hurting Khan even worse than Prescott ended up doing.

After Khan’s terrible performance against Prescott, Khan’s Cuban trainer, Jorge Rubio, was let go and Freddie Roach, a well-known American trainer, was signed on as his replacement. The change was made in hopes of improving Khan’s porous defense, even though Rubio never had much of a chance himself to work on fixing Khan’s defense. Roach would seem to have his work cut out for him, as Khan’s chin has been a problem that has haunted him since his amateur days in the Olympics.

While Khan has extraordinary hand speed, great movement and excellent offensive skills, his chin may be a limiting factor that may eventually cap how far he can go as a fighter. Roach may be a great trainer, but he’s only human and won’t be able to take the punches for Khan in the ring. If there was somehow a way of building up a chin, then I’d have hope that Khan may someday fix his chin problem, but I don’t see that happening.

After getting taken out by Prescott, don’t expect to see Khan facing any further hard punchers for the time being. In fact, I’d be surprised if they put him in the ring with another hard puncher for the next couple of years or so, much less in his next fight on December 6th. In a way, I think that will retard his growth as a fighter because he’s likely to be put in with more C-level fighter, kind of like the same type that he’s built up his impressive record with.

I think he’d be far better off to continue to pushed up the latter against better fighters in a sink or swim maneuver. It’s the only way he’ll ever improve, and if he doesn’t have the chin for the sport, so much the better he doesn’t stick around wasting his and everyone else’s time by fighting garbage quality fighters.