By Gary Brownlie: Amir Khan is a British boxer who has been protected thus far in his career, rightly so in my opinion as he is the kind of boxer who isn’t a born fighter. He received criticism within Britain as he rose to fame at the same time as we had champions such as Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe who both liked to engage their opponents and not take a backwards step.

The problem the public had with Amir is that he wasn’t involved in any real tear-ups, resulting in him being thrown in with the big punching Colombian fighter Breidis Prescott. This was a step too far for the young lad from Bolton and he was quickly dispatched to the canvas, with great ferocity from a fighter not dissimilar to Marcos Maidana.

Times have changed though, with Amir joining up with the team who turned Manny Pacquiao into the poster-boy for boxing, I’m not saying that Khan is in any way the successor to Pacquiao but he has placed his development in the best possible hands. With Freddie Roach commenting that Khan has got more potential than Pacquiao had when he took the Filipino under his wing. This has been misquoted has Roach saying Khan is better than Pacquiao, the truth in what Freddie was saying is that Khan has better natural/physical attributes than Pacquiao at the same point in their respective careers.

Critics of Amir Khan will always point to the embarrassing knock-out defeat to Breidis Prescott, but even Khan himself admits that he needed that defeat. At the time of that fight Khan was fighting under Frank Warren and had a multi-fight PPV deal with Sky, which was far too much pressure to be putting on a man who was barely into his 20’s. In the end he crumbled under the pressure and the weight of the punches from Prescott.

However, this time around I think it is Khans time to shine on the big stage. If it was ever going to be his time, then this is it, being trained by the best in the business. If anyone can get the best of out Amir then its Freddie Roach and Alex Ariza.