By William Mackay: You can always tell when trainer Freddie Roach is trying to pump up interest for one of his fighters’ mismatches by pouring on the praise to the extent where it’s almost sickening. That’s never more than case than in this Saturday’s fight between Roach’s fighter IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-1, 18 KO’s) and his hand-picked opponent, the feather-fisted Lamont Peterson (29-1-1, 15 KO’s) in a fight that will be televised by HBO. Roach may need to work overtime building Peterson up some more because the boxing world sees this as another safe fight for Khan. But I know the drill. Find a weak puncher that isn’t a threat to Khan, brag about how good he is, then knock him out and get all the adoration from clueless boxing fans.

Peterson is a hardly a knockout threat with a KO percentage of 48.39 percent. But Roach is doing his best to get boxing fans excited about this mismatch, saying to the telegraph.co.uk that Peterson has “Freakish strength. Peterson is strong, very strong, and we have to prepare accordingly. He is the strongest, most dangerous opponent Amir has ever faced.”

Roach was also the one that was pumping up another one of Khan’s hand-picked opponents not too long ago the light hitting Paul McCloskey.

Roach says he knows how hard that Peterson can punch because he held the mitts for Peterson earlier this year when with the United States Olympic squad. I just wonder if Roach’s recollection of details may be a little foggy with time. Roach must have worked out with a ton of the fighters from the Olympic squad and I wonder if he’s got Peterson mistaken for somebody else that can actually punch.

I hate when I’m deceived, but thankfully I’ve seen Peterson fight seven or eight times and seen that he doesn’t have big power and he’s certainly not a bigger puncher than previous Khan opponents Breidis Prescott or Marcos Maidana. Both of those guys hit a lot harder than Peterson I would say.

If I was to compare Peterson’s power to any fighter in the light welterweight division I would compare him to Andriy Kotelnik, although he doesn’t have the jab that Kotelnik has. Kotelnik isn’t considered a big puncher by any means.