By Chris Williams: If Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach gets his way, Amir Khan will be the backup option for the 36-year-old Pacquiao for his next fight in April or May this year if the negotiations for the Floyd Mayweather Jr fight fall though.
Roach used to train Khan for a short while, and he says that Pacquiao got the better of the 5’10” fighter in 20 of their sparring sessions. Roach feels that it would be a fight that Pacquiao would most likely win.
Arranging a fight between Khan and Pacquiao would very likely be a lot easier task than putting together the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, because Pacquiao is the clear A-side for a fight like that and he could use his negotiating muscle to get as good as deal as he’s gotten in past fights against the likes of Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley.
The Sweet Science is reporting that Roach likes the idea of Khan being the backup plan for Pacquiao. Roach didn’t mention whether Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank could sit down and negotiate a fight with Khan’s manager Al Haymon. You would think that Khan being with Haymon would preclude a fight being put together no matter how much Roach liked the fight.
There’s also the question of whether Arum would let Pacquiao fight a difficult fighter like Khan. If you watch what Khan’s new trainer Virgil Hunter has done for his game in the last couple of years, he’s changed him completely. Khan now throws combinations and immediately looks to grab, and this keeps his opponents from being able to time him and get in their big power shots.
With Khan having the longer arms than Pacquiao, he’d be able to land his shots and immediately tie him up before he could get his own punches in. Khan is also good at using his jab now and backing away out of harm’s way before his opponents can get a shot off. If Khan does that against the shorter 5’6” Pacquiao, he could make him look silly and clown him for 12 rounds. I don’t know that Arum would want that to happen to Pacquiao, because that’s his money fighter.
That’s why I highly doubt that Arum would give the green light to a Pacquiao-Khan fight, even if Roach is talking up the fight a lot with the media. Arum likes to match Pacquiao against his own Top Rank stable fighters for in house fights, and Khan isn’t one of his guys. I don’t see Arum letting Khan get a chance to expose Pacquiao as an aging fighter.
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