(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By William Mackay: Lightweight Carlos Molina (17-0, 7 KO’s) is a huge 7-1 underdog for his fight against former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-3, 18 KO’s) for their fight on Saturday night on Showtime at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles, California.
Molina doesn’t see himself as just an easy fight for Khan, because he’s coming to beat him on Saturday, and make a big name out of himself in the process.
Molina figures he’ll be stronger for moving up in weight from 135 to 140 for this fight. The 5’6” Molina has been fighting at lightweight and he says it’s been difficult for him to get down to that weight. But for this fight he won’t have to take much weight off and it could give him more power, and that’s something that’s been missing from his game recently. He hasn’t knocked anyone out in two years despite facing mostly mediocre opposition.
Molina said “This fight right here is me beating Khan is going to catapult me to that level where everybody is going to know who I am.”
Boxing fans will definitely know who Molina is if he can somehow pull off an upset against Khan, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be able to hang with the top light welterweights division like Danny Garcia and Lucas Matthysse. Beating the fragile-chinned Khan and beating those guys are completely different things.
All a victory over Khan will show is that Khan doesn’t have the chin to be fighting at the top level in the game.
Khan was knocked out badly in his last fight by Danny Garcia, so Molina is catching Khan at the right moment. Khan lost to Garcia in July, and it’s possible that his ability to take a hard shot might have decreased from that loss.
Molina will be testing Khan’s chin out to see if he can do what Garcia and Breidis Prescott did in knocking Khan out.
This will be Khan’s first fight with his new trainer Virgil Hunter and Khan has been saying that’s going to be a much more careful fighter now that he’s with Hunter. Khan will likely fight defensively for the entire fight, and not want to stray from Hunter’s conservative game plan.
Hunter probably isn’t going to be willing to take Khan off his leash for fear that he could get clipped by a big shot from Molina and end up on the canvas for the 10 count. Khan tends to boot his trainers after he loses by knockout, so you can expect Hunter to be ushered out quickly if Khan loses in that fashion.
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