Hunter: Khan is taking dangerous fight against Canelo

By Boxing News - 05/05/2016 - Comments

1-khan-canelo (1)By Jeff Aranow: Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) is fighting in the biggest match of his 11-year pro career on Saturday night against the bigger and stronger WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) in a catch-weight of 155lbs.

Khan’s trainer Virgil Hunter sees this fight as a dangerous one for Khan due to the size and punching power that Canelo has. While Khan and Canelo have both looked around the same size in the lead up to this fight, Canelo is going to transform himself like a magician on Saturday night and come into the fight looking like a light heavyweight in the ring by rehydrating to the 170s and possibly the 180s.

Canelo made comments during his meeting with Khan on Max Kellerman’s special about him being no heavier than 170, but that obviously is Canelo downplaying his size to the extreme. You can expect Canelo to be between 175 and 180 on Saturday night, and that’s going to put a ton of pressure on Khan to try and deal with that size without getting his head knocked off in the process.

Hunter says Khan will fight WBC interim middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin if they beat Canelo on Saturday night.

“If he wins, we’ll fight Golovkin,” said Hunter to the media. “No one can really disapprove of him going up to middleweight, because he’s been looking for a big fight. He was looking for a challenge. He wanted to put himself in a dangerous situation to find out how good he is. I think it’s something all fighters should do. I encourage it. If he fought Pacquiao or Mayweather, he’d be taking the same risk of losing; no matter how you lose. It’s the same risk. He could get hurt in those fights. So I don’t see any difference,” said Hunter.

You’ve got to respect Khan for stepping up to take on Canelo because it’s brave thing Khan is doing. However, it’s also the product of Khan being ignored by the top fighters for 11 years. Khan has been in kind of in the same situation Golovkin is in right now in being considered not worth fighting due to how difficult his fighting style is, and not being popular enough for the top guys to want to fight.

If Khan was an incredibly popular fighter, then Mayweather and Pacquiao would have fought him ages ago. Since they never did choose to fight him, Khan is now moving up to middleweight to take on a risky fighter in Canelo. If Khan was the same as Canelo, as Golovkin is, he’d probably not be getting the fight with him. Canelo tends to want to have an advantage over his opponents.

YouTube video

“I’ve always wanted to be in a big fight like this and give the U.K,” said Khan to ESPN.com. “fans want a huge fight and this is the chance to give them a big fight but not only to give them the fight, but to win it as well. I’ve always said I belong at the top and this is my time where I show that.”

Khan is clearly being overlooked by Canelo and his promotional team at Golden Boy. When you see those guys talking about a fight against Golovkin, which they’ve been doing for weeks now, then that can mean only one thing and they’re looking past Khan.

This can work well for Khan if he can come out with a great game plan that will neutralize Canelo’s size and power the way that Mayweather was able to neutralize these assets. It doesn’t matter how strong and how much heavier Canelo is than Khan, if he can’t get the opportunity to throw his big power shots, then he might as well be the weaker fighter because he’s going to need to have Khan be available for him to land his big shots.

“It’s amazing to be headlining here with a big name like Canelo, who’s a superstar. People have me as a guy who has no chance,” said Khan. “But this is what makes this fight really exciting for me because I’m guy who’s supposed to walk in there and get beat but I’m not going to let that happen.”

Khan wouldn’t be such a big underdog if he fought Canelo immediately after his loss to Mayweather in 2013. Since that fight, Canelo has looked improved with two one-sided wins over James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo, as well as close decision wins over Erislandy Lara and Miguel Cotto.