Pressure on Khan to deliver

By Boxing News - 12/15/2012 - Comments

007KhanIMG_0152(Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime) By John F. McKenna (McJack): The career of former WBA/IBF light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-3, 18 KO’s) is all on the line tonight when he faces unbeaten Californian Carlos Molina (17-0-1, 7 KO’s) tonight at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Khan’s career is at an all time low after he suffered two consecutive defeats.

A year ago Amir lost a controversial decision to Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s). There was no controversy however over Khan’s loss to the still undefeated Danny Garcia (25-0, 15 KO’s) who scored an impressive TKO victory over Amir in the 4th round last July.

It was only a year ago that Khan was being touted by his then trainer Freddie Roach, as being the future #1 Pound for Pound fighter in the world. Obviously things did not go as Khan and five time trainer of the year Roach had planned. Amir’s fight with the light hitting Molina is a must win situation.

Molina was selected as Khan’s opponent tonight because it was thought that he would be a low risk for Amir, who is coming off two consecutive losses. “King Khan” knows as well as anyone else that he cannot afford to lose to Molina, who although undefeated is stepping up from lightweight to take on Amir.

Khan essentially threw trainer Roach under the bus after his TKO loss to Garcia and fired him. Ironically though, Amir failed to follow the advice of his veteran trainer in both the Peterson and Garcia matches. Many boxing pundits are of the opinion that Amir could have won both fights if he had just followed Roach’s advice.

Amir decided to go with new trainer Virgil Hill, who is also the trainer for unbeaten super middleweight champion Andre Ward. The word coming out of Khan’s training camp is that Khan has dedicated much of his time concentrating on defense.

Khan maintains that he has learned from his mistakes and will not make those same mistakes again. Amir realizes that much is expected of him against the smaller, less experienced Molina, who at 5’7” is two inches shorter than the 5’9” Khan. For Molina the match with Amir is kind of a coming out party as he is moving up in weight to take on what for him is a dangerous opponent.

Team Khan will make an assessment as where to go from here after the Molina contest.



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