Roach complaining of bruises from Khan’s punches

By Scott Gilfoid: Freddie Roach, Amir Khan’s trainer, recently complained of bruises on his body from the shots that World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Khan (21-1, 15 KO’s) has been landing after a recent session of hard body work, according to The Mirror. Roach has been letting Khan pound on his body pad in preparation for this Saturday night’s title defense against challenger Dmitriy Salita (30-0-1, 16 KO’s) at the Metro Arena, Newcastle, Tyne and Wear.

Roach, who only started training the 22-year-old Khan last year after his disastrous 1st round knockout loss to Breidis Prescott, is working on improving Khan’s defense and use of the jab. Khan had a problem in the past where he would try to slug too much with his opponents. If Khan had a good chin his slugging wouldn’t be an issue. However, Khan’s chin isn’t the best, as he showed in getting knocked out in the 1st round by Prescott last year.

This is why Roach is trying to keep Khan from leaving his chin exposed by trying to slug it out in his fights. Salita thinks there isn’t much hope for Khan regardless of how much Roach trains him. Salita believes that because Khan has a pointy chin that it means that he’ll always have a problem getting hurt in fights. We’ll see on Saturday if Salita’s theory is correct or not, because he’s going to be trying hard to test Khan’s chin as much as possible.

Roach, though, isn’t impressed with Salita, saying “He’s stepping up into a class he’s not ready for. He’s got 30 wins, but tell me who he’s fought?” Roach has a point. Virtually all of Salita’s opponents are no named B level fighters. However, it’s not Salita’s fault that Khan chose Andriy Kotelnik, the former WBA light welterweight champion, to go after when he decided to go after a title. If Khan had chosen one of the arguably tougher champions in the light welterweight division like Juan Urango, Tim Bradley and Devon Alexander, Khan would be facing the likes of Juan Diaz, Kendall Holt, Mike Alvarado or Nate Campbell as a challenger to the title rather than Salita.

Roach continues “He’s [Salita] been marketed very well. I don’t really believe in that, and I feel you should step up in class as you go.” It sounds as if Roach is talking about Khan, because Amir hasn’t faced a lot of tough fighters on the way up the ladder. Khan fought an old undersized Marco Antonio Barrera, but nothing was learned from that fight because Barrera was badly cut in the 2nd round high on his forehead and had to fight with blood dripping down into his eyes until the 5th when the ringside doctor finally advised for the fight to be stopped.

Of Khan’s other fights against good fighters, he was stopped by Prescott in the 1st round, and then defeated Kotelnik, who many boxing experts felt was the weakest of the champions. If Khan had worked his way up the latter like Roach was talking about, you expect Khan to face fighters like Victor Ortiz, Ricardo Torres, Diaz, Junior Witter, Zab Judah, Alvarado, Campbell, Paulie Malignaggi, Ajose Olusegun, Victor Cayo, and Lucas Matthysse instead of the fighters that Khan did fight – 36-year-old Barrera, Osin Fagan, Michael Gomez, Martin Kristiansen, Gairy St. Clair, Graham Earl, Scott Lawton and Willie Limond. There’s nothing wrong with those fighters, but can you really say they compare with the upper level fighters that I mentioned?

If Khan was really stepping up the latter the correct way like Roach says that Salita should have done, then you would have liked to have seen Khan face the better fighters instead of the B level fighters that he fought. Prescott was a good opponent, but Khan was blown out of the water. Roach sounds like a hypocrite to me.

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