Roach thinks Khan can beat Bradley, Alexander and Maidana

By Boxing News - 08/20/2010 - Comments

Image: Roach thinks Khan can beat Bradley, Alexander and MaidanaBy William Mackay: You can usually expect a trainer to have a certain amount of loyalty and confidence about his or her particular fighters, but trainer Freddie Roach’s confidence toward his fighter World Boxing Association (WBA) light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) borders on the extreme.

Despite Khan having very little experience against truly top quality opposition at light welterweight, Roach already believes that Khan can beat all of the top three light welterweights in the boxing.

Roach seems to be forgetting Khan’s 1st round knockout loss to Colombian Breidis Prescott in 2008, a fight in which Khan was staggered with a jab in the opening seconds and taken quickly with a series of left hooks to the head that left Khan a pile of jelly on the canvas.

It’s no secret that Khan never attempted to avenge that knockout loss, and once Prescott was beaten by a couple of fighters, he was deemed an unworthy opponent for Khan. In an article by Gareth Davies at the Telegraph.co.uK, Roach says “Amir is ready to take any one of those guys – Maidana, Bradley or Alexander. I really don’t care which one it is. I’ve been watching them all recently, and it doesn’t really matter which one they put him in with. Amir is clearly the best one out there.”

I wonder if Roach is seeing Alexander, Maidana and Bradley as fighters that his best pupil Manny Pacquiao would destroy, and has things mixed up his head about which fighter he’s talking about.

Khan hasn’t beaten anyone that would leave you to believe that he could beat any of those three, let alone all three like Roach thinks. It would be nice if Khan would actually start fighting one of them so Roach can look like a genius as fast as possible.

However, Khan isn’t looking to fight any one of them, despite Roach’s talk. Khan is gunning for 37-year-old lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez, who is three inches shorter than Khan and a heck of a lot older.

A lot of boxing fans see this as a cherry picking move on Khan and Golden Boy Promotions part, because Marquez isn’t a light welterweight and has already been proven to be too small when he attempted to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. at a 143 pound catch weight.

Khan already fought Paulie Malignaggi, a light hitting former IBF light welterweight champion, in his last fight in May. Fans were hoping that Khan would start fighting quality fighters in his own division after that fight, and not smaller fighters that Khan has a huge size and youth advantage against.

Never the less, Khan is looking to fight Marquez next regardless of the criticism that’s been heaped on his head by fans and some writers. One can only hope that once this fight is out of the way, Khan is finally going to be matched against those three fighters – Alexander, Bradley and Maidana – that Roach seems to think Khan can beat.



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