Will Sparring With Pacquiao Help Khan For Fagan?

By Boxing News - 12/02/2008 - Comments

Image: Will Sparring With Pacquiao Help Khan For Fagan?By Dan Ambrose: Previously undefeated Amir Khan (18-1, 14 KOs) comes into this Saturday’s fight with a lot of pressure on him for his battle against Oisin Fagan (22-5, 13 KOs) at the ExCel Arena, Dockland, in London. Khan has replaced his trainer Jorge Rubio and added American trainer Freddie Roach in his place. It’s difficult to say whether Roach, a trainer known mainly for specializing in teaching sound offensive skills rather than defensive, will have much effect on Khan’s still developing boxing skill.

However, one thing that’s come of it has been Khan having the ability to train with Roach’s star pupil, Manny Pacquiao. So far, Khan has sparred a lot with Pacquiao while the Filipino star trains for his bout this Saturday against Oscar De La Hoya.

In the end, Khan may not need sparring with someone as good as Pacquiao in order to be the likes of Fagan, because he appears to be big step down from the fighters that Khan has been mixing it up with in the past year. Known for his heavy pressure and brawling style of fighting, Fagan has little in the way of hand speed and appears to have very average power.

Although he has a decent percentage of knockouts on his record, but unfortunately for him, most of those knockouts have come against fighters with losing records with few fights under their belt. Of what I’ve seen of him, Fagan looks to be weak puncher, and without any kind of hand speed.

If Khan’s idea is to use Pacquiao to mimic the type of fighter he’ll be getting in the ring with on Saturday, then I’ve got to say that he’s wasting his time by doing that, for Pacquiao is like a fastball pitcher whereas Fagan is like a knuckleball pitcher with little speed.

Hopefully, Khan sparring with someone as fast as Pacquiao doesn’t mess him up for this fight, because more than anything else, Khan can’t afford to lose or look bad. He needs a big win, something on the lines of a 1st or 2nd round knockout.

Looking at a couple of Fagan’s fights, that’s not beyond the realm of possibilities, because he looks very average to me and not in the class of many of Khan’s prior knockout victims like Graham Earl, Martin Kristjansen and Michael Gomez, to name just a few.

However, Khan’s confidence will probably be low going into this fight, given his 1st round TKO loss to Breidis Prescott in September. That was a surprise loss for Khan, who many felt that he would be able to take care of Prescott without too many problems.

Before the fight, Prescott wasn’t considered to be a top fighter, yet he made Khan look bad. What Prescott did have is power and a lot of it, which in the end was all he needed to take Khan out. Fagan likes to put a lot of pressure on his opponents, and because he’s fighting Khan and almost guaranteed to be fighting in front of a huge audience, Fagan will be fighting very hard and trying to take advantage of Khan’s weak chin.

It’s unclear how much damage was done to Khan from his loss to Prescott, and whether the knockout loss further weakened Khan’s already tender chin, making him even more susceptible to knockouts. Khan better hope that Pacquiao tested his chin out thoroughly for this Saturday, because if Khan’s not up to the mark, Fagan may end up knocking him out again.

And believe me, another knockout loss for Khan right now would just about finish him as a fighter. Of course, he could come back from that but his future would be seriously dimmed with another knockout, especially one at the hands of someone like Fagan, who is in no way comparable to the power that Khan will be meeting when he starts fighting 1st tier fighters at some point in the future.



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