Khan Plans to Hit and Move Against Kotelnik – Boxing

By William Mackay: Amir Khan (20-1, 15 KO’s) will be coming out with a new fighting style taught to him by his trainer Freddie Roach this Saturday night against WBA light welterweight champion Andriy Kotelnik (31-2-1, 13 KO’s) in an effort to take his title away from him at the M.E.N Arena, in Manchester, England.

In the place of Khan’s once daring style of fighting which included a lot of slugging, he’ll be focusing on jabbing frequently, moving more around the ring and picking his spots to land body shots. This is all an effort to protect Khan’s glass chin which has been exposed by several fighters while Amir has been moving up the rankings, most recently by Colombian Breidis Prescott, who starched Khan in an easy 1st round knockout in September 2008.

Rather than attempt to redeem himself in a rematch with Prescott, Khan has instead learned his lesson from the embarrassing defeat and will be using the knowledge against the 31-year-old Kotelnik, who conveniently is a soft puncher compared to Prescott and many of the other fighters in the light welterweight and lightweight divisions.

Khan, more or less, has put the loss behind him and has picked up two quick wins over little known Osin Fagin and a controversial 5th round technical decision over Marco Antonio Barrera in March. It would have been perhaps better had Khan tried his new boxing style against a much less capable fighter than Kotelnik, who despite having little in the way of power, has a granite chin and top notch boxing skills.

Khan might have been better served to cut his teeth with his new style against some more European fodder like the ones that he has mostly fought since turning pro in 2005. But it’s a gamble that Khan and his promoter much have felt pretty good about otherwise they probably wouldn’t have taken on the huge risk of fighting Kotelnik.

Khan, a 2004 Olympic Silver Medalist for Britain, will be using a lot of in and out movement against Kotelnik, and won’t be sticking around long enough to let the Ukrainian land much of anything. I suspect that it might work. However, Khan has problems with getting caught up in the crowd noise and if he starts finding success against Kotelnik early on, Amir might get a little over confident and start slugging it out in an effort to take Kotelnik.

Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach has no doubt warned him against this, because if Kotelnik wasn’t hurt in his fights against Marcos Maidana and Junior Witter, he likely won’t be bothered by Khan’s shots. However, Khan has always like to show off his hand speed by throwing flurries of punches and it will be interesting to see if he can resist not doing that in the fight.

Kotelnik will almost surely take advantage of Khan if he does decide on throwing a lot of punches and will land some significant blows. With Khan’s brittle chin, it might not take that hard of a shot for Kotelnik to put him down, so Khan will have to be very disciplined against him if he wants to win.

Khan has several back up plans that he will be employing if he finds himself having problems with his new stick and move strategy. You might see Khan elect to use the tried and true punch and grab technique if he finds that boxing Kotelnik isn’t working for him. I highly doubt that Roach will instruct Khan to slug with Kotelnik, knowing that Khan’s egg shell chin could give out at a moment’s notice. It would be an ugly style, to be sure. But it would at least give Khan a chance to win without being knocked out or dropped again.

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