By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan’s trainer Virgil Hunter sees Khan’s opponent for May 29th, former WBO light welterweight champion Chris Algieri (20-1, 8 KOs), as someone who is being greatly underestimated by Khan’s critics, and he doesn’t see it as fair. Khan (30-3, 19 KOs) and Algieri will be fighting each other on Premier Boxing Champions at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA. The undercard will have former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi facing Danny O’Connor in a 10 round bout.
Khan’s critics aren’t pleased with the choice of the 31-year-old Algieri as his next opponent. Why? Because Algieri is coming off of a horribly one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss to WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao last November. Algieri didn’t just lose the fight; he got massacred by Pacquiao in getting knocked down six times. It was so one-sided that you could make a strong argument that Algieri’s trainer should have thrown in the towel to save him for another day because he had no chance of winning the fight, and that was painfully obvious by the 5th round.
The rest of the fight was just a seek and destroy affair with Pacquiao chasing Algieri all around the ring to punish him. With all the talk that Khan has made about how he deserves to be right up there with Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. in terms of being one of the big names in boxing, fans expect Khan to face better opposition than Algieri. Pacquiao took heat as well for facing Algieri, but he at least got a little bit of cover considering that Algieri was unbeaten at the time that he fought him and not coming off of a loss like he is now.
Khan fighting a guy that is coming off of a loss like the one Algieri experienced, makes Khan look bad in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. Besides that, Algieri can’t punch, and this is just another non-puncher that Khan has faced. The perception that a lot of boxing fans have is that Khan is shying away from facing fighters with power after his knockout loss to Danny Garcia in 2012. Khan had already been knocked out by Breidis Prescott in the past as well, and he was almost knocked out by Marcos Maidana in 2010.
“Chris Algieri is being minimized by a lot of Khan’s critics, but he’s not being minimized by us at all,” Hunter via Fighthype. “He’s proven that he belongs at the top level. You’re talking about a guy who beat [Emmanuel] Taylor, who I consider to be heck of a fighter and best [Ruslan] Provodnikov. He beat him convincingly and took his belt. He’s a 140 pound champion. He didn’t lose his 140 pound belt. He sacrificed it for a bigger moment.”
Beating Taylor, a fringe contender at 140, really doesn’t say much about Algieri. Now if Algieri had beaten someone like Danny Garcia or Adrien Broner, then Hunter could brag about the fight, and say that Khan has a real live opponent, but that’s not the case. It doesn’t mean much that Algieri beat Taylor or even Provodnikov. We’d already seen Provodnikov lose to Mauricio Herrera and get a controversial win over journeyman DeMarcus Corley in the past. Algieri needs wins over the quality guys at 140 like Lucas Matthysse, Broner, Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson.
“He [Algieri] brings a lot of height, speed and abilities,” Hunter said. “He just hired a great coach in John David Jackson. This fight is by no means an easy fight. He’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to take a lot of focus and determination on Khan’s part to be victorious in this fight.”
For Khan to be taken seriously by his critics, he’s going to need to stop facing non-punchers like Algieri, little 5’5” Carlos Molina, former lightweight Carlos Diaz, Luis Collazo and Devon Alexander. Those guys are the type of fighters that you would want to fight if you had a chin problem, but they’re not the guys that you want to fight if you want to impress Khan’s critics in my view. I think I know what Khan’s critics are looking for in terms of opposition. I think they want to see Khan fight these guys: Kell Brook, Marcos Maidana, Keith Thurman, Diego Chaves, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Gennady Golovkin, Demetrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara, Vanes Martirosyan, Lucas Matthysse, Adrien Broner, Provodnikov, Terence Crawford and Lamont Peterson. Those are the fighters that Khan would likely win a lot of respect and appreciation from boxing fans if he were to face them, because all of them can punch. They’re not light hitters, and in some cases, Khan has already been beaten by some of them. Heck, you can throw Breidis Prescott’s name into the mix because Khan never avenged his 1st round knockout loss to him.
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