Khan-Prescott: Look For An Easy Win For Amir

By Boxing News - 09/05/2008 - Comments

khan4233.jpgBy Nate Anderson: Unbeaten lightweight contender Amir Khan (18-0, 14 KOs) will be facing yet another badly over-matched opponent on Saturday, this one undefeated Colombian Breidis Prescott (19-0, 17 KOs), whose record is badly over-inflated with wins over mainly lower quality fighters with losing records. However, he does still have the ‘o’ on his record, as well as a high percentage of knockouts, which is probably the only reason he was chosen to face Khan. However, Khan has already faced much better competition than this guy, notably Michael Gomez, Martin Kristjansen and Gairy St. Clair, so you can expect an early night for Khan with an easy knockout win.

Prescott, 25, is a threat to Khan, but only if he can catch him coming inside trying to throw body shots. Minus that, then this should be an easy fight because Prescott has very slow hand speed and he moves around the ring as if his feet were partially mired in mud. Even his power isn’t what it appears. Prescott punches hard, but is more of a clubbing-type puncher than a one-punch knockout artist. Indeed, if not for the mostly lower quality fighters on his record, I imagine that his knockout record would be much lower than it is. In fact, I consider Khan to be the harder puncher of the two by a slight margin.

Prescott’s power is good, but he’s very erratic with his punches and has a difficult time trying to find his mark. Against Richard Abril, Prescott’s last opponent, he had a lot of problems trying to land his slower punches against the speedy former Cuban amateur star. After struggling with Prescott early in the fight, he began circling the ring, jabbing and giving Prescott all kinds of problems until the last two rounds when Prescott came back to narrowly win the rounds due to his pressure.

Though Prescott won the fight, it ended up a 10-round split decision and he didn’t look good in winning. This is why it seems interesting that he would be chosen as an opponent for Khan, considering that it was a disappointing performance by Prescott, not a good one. I guess it doesn’t matter, though, because most boxing fans failed to see the fight and had little to go by when Prescott’s name was announced as an opponent for Khan.

For Khan’s part, he badly needs to work on his defense. He was knocked down in his last fight against Gomez, as well as against Willie Limond in July 2007. With this in mind, it’s probably the reason why Khan recently opted to get a new trainer in Jorge Rubio, a former trainer for the Cuban National boxing team, and someone that specializes in teaching defensive techniques. However, Khan has only been training with him for a short while and may still not have absorbed enough for it to help him in this Saturday’s fight with Prescott.

He probably won’t need it, like I said, because Prescott other than his inflated record, is a pretty limited fighter from what I’ve seen of him. Even with Khan’s wild charging attacks, which have always looked rather amateurish to me, he’ll still likely be able to take Prescott out in short order. Although I wouldn’t recommend for Khan to go rushing in at him, because he does after all hit harder than any fighter that Khan has yet faced, and it would be a very easy thing for him to land one of his huge hooks and put Khan down on his duff once again.

Prescott has enough power that it he can hurt Khan with something, there’s a very good chance he’ll be able to finish, unlike the other two fighters that have put Khan down in his career. Expect to see to Khan mostly jabbing and circling the ring, making Prescott look bad. After a few rounds of this, I see Khan opening up on his with a flurry of shots and taking the Colombian out.



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