By William Mackay: No matter how I look at the December 11th fight between WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) and challenger Marcos Maidana (29-1, 27 KO’s), I can’t see Khan staying on his feet for long and not getting knocked out.

When I see this fight, it reminds me a lot of the first fight between George Foreman vs. Joe Frazier, but in this case, I don’t see Khan as being powerful like Frazier. I just can’t see Khan lasting long with Maidana punching holes through him. Maybe Khan could survive if he was allowed to wear head gear the entire fight and Maidana was forced to wear 16 ounce gloves, and perhaps Khan’s trainer was in the ring with him to try and keep Maidana off of his hopeful star.

However, even with Roach in the ring with him and Maidana wearing 16 ounce gloves, I see Khan getting knocked flat. Maidana would probably take out Roach with one punch and then tear into Khan with power shots and have him strewn across the ring before long. But seriously, Khan is really up against a terror in this fight. I don’t know what Khan can do win the fight, because he doesn’t appear have the chin for the task.

I don’t think his management has done him any favors by putting him in with exclusively light punchers for the past two years nonstop. It’s like someone struggling with math. Instead of working though the problems to teach the person how to do it, the pupil has been put back at a lower level to take on elementary math. And this in turn boosts the students confidence, but they still have no clue how to tackle the math that they were having problems with from the start. In other words, I think Khan’s growth as a fighter has been stunted the past two years with the soft touches he’s been put in with to keep him from getting knocked out again.

Khan was knocked flat by Breidis Prescott in a 1st round knockout in 2008. Instead of easing his way back into fighting bigger and bigger punchers, to that he could learn how to fight these guys, Khan has been put in with weak punchers like Paulie Malignaggi and Andriy Kotelnik.

This I see has been a total waste of time. To be sure, Khan has won a paper title at light welterweight in beating Kotelnik for the WBA strap, but he hasn’t beaten the best fighters in the division, and he hasn’t proven that he can take a major shot without kissing the canvas.

I hate to say this but Maidana is going to knock the confidence out of Khan on December 11th when he knocks him out. This is going to send Khan back to square one in his career, back to the point where he was after getting knocked out by Prescott. This time hopefully they’ll bring him along the correct way by putting him in with bigger and bigger punchers, so that khan can learn how to fight these guys.

It may be that Khan will never have the chin to beat any of the bigger punchers. But in that case, it’s better to find it out sooner rather than later. Khan could then retire and focus on another career that’s more suited towards his body.