Amir Khan, stop talking, please!

By Nationvegas - 08/07/2013 - Comments

khan#2By Rusty Nate: I don’t like to dislike fighters. I love the sport of boxing in all its glory, in sickness and in health you might say. I love the different styles and more importantly personalities that come together in this one of a kind sport.

Believe it or not, I do find some of the things fighters say in the heat of the moment, true or false, actually add to the charisma of the sport, and make it what it is today.

One fighter has, over time, managed to break that habit of a lifetime of mine and caused me to actually dislike his presence in the boxing world.

When a fighter makes claims or statements that are SO ridiculous that it brings their own mental state of mind into serious question.

I’ll give a comparison for example. Tyson Fury vs David Haye. On paper and from previous experience this fight is a complete miss match, the history and evidence suggests this will be a very quick and straight forward knock out for Haye even as early as rounds 1 or 2. Fury has made some outrageous statements and claims in the build up already, as he has done in the past, and a lot of people get very annoyed about how a fighter like Fury can believe in himself so much when he is clearly overmatched. Well this doesn’t actually bother me at all, the reason is. Fury is an unbeaten fighter. He may not have faced top level opposition, he may not have won a title of sorts and he may have been floored by shorter Cruiserweight fighters, BUT he has beaten everyone put in front of him, he can clearly take a good punch and get up and fight back. He has the heart and the power to beat most fighters in the world if he lands cleanly but he just lacks speed and movement; that’s all.

Now let’s make the comparison with the self proclaimed “King Khan”. Khan’s career was brought along very slowly, he was matched against fringe “known names” in the UK such as Michael Gomez and Willie Limond who both caused khan all kinds of problems during their fights. After taking the commonwealth title off of Limond he went on to defend a few times against lower class opposition before the biggest fight came to pass. Breidis Prescott was an unknown fighter to most of the world with a pretty padded 19-0 record with 18 KO’s against no one in particular. Personally I am of the impression that if you can KO 18 of 19 fighters even at fringe contender level then you have a punch that will cause problems, especially for a fighter like Khan who is easy to hit because of the lack of head movement and who had been floored plenty of times already in his career by the time you fight. (I made £700 on this fight betting on Bredis to win in round one, if I had bet in the first 60 seconds then I would have tripled that pay out).

So anyway, Khan moves on from the KO loss by facing Fagan (another “who’s he” fighter) before being smartly matched by his promoter at the time with an old, past his prime and over weight class HOF name, Marco Antonio Barrera. Khan easily out-speeded him and stayed out of range from Barrera to stop him on cuts in the mid rounds. He then won his first world title against Andriy Kotelnik, who had lost twice and drawn once in the past and seeing as he only fought once more after Khan (a loss to Alexander). He was clearly on the way down and out of the game. Does anyone know who Kotelnik beat for the world title? That’s right Gavin Rees, a fighter who just lost two in a row, one of which was at domestic level to a fighter that has no hope of ever reaching world level.

After that fight Khan beat the over-hyped Dimitry Salita, and actually had a good performance against Paulie Malignaggi, and then faced his first true test, Marcos Maidana. Khan won the fight on points, but he took some serious punishment in this fight and at one point was saved from certain KO by the referee who jumped between them for no real reason. I can only assume he saw Khan taking punches and felt like helping him out?

Once Khan had beaten Maidana, Khan went through a head-butt win against the overrated Paul McCloskey after looking dodgy for 6 rounds, and then stopped Zab Judah with a perfectly placed “low blow” in the 5th round.

Since then Khan has been out worked by the weakest of the top level fighters in Lamont Peterson, and Khan was then easily KO’d by Danny Garcia and floored by the little dude Julio Diaz, who he beat on points. Funny really considering Diaz had been easily stopped by most of the other losses on his record.

Now here is my question: can anyone here present see any reason that Khan might have earned any right to make claims of greatness or pound for pound best or being the best fighter for Mayweather or Kell Brook hasn’t proved himself enough to face Khan?

This is where the sport falls down. Fighters like Khan that have literally done nothing since turning pro to show that they will be remember after their years in the sport bad mouthing other good fighters with unbeaten records with no basis for their comments what so ever. That’s what bothers me and THAT’s what I believe brings into question the mental state of mind of some fighters.  Has Khan taken so many hard shots already that he is delusional but doesn’t know it?



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