By Nate Anderson: On the latest installment of the Steve Bunce’s Boxing Hour show, promoter Frank Warren said that due to Amir Khan’s win over number #1 ranked WBO lightweight contender Marco Antonio Barrera last Saturday night, Khan is in the position to fight for the WBO title later this year. Apparently, Warren originally had designs for Khan to face former WBO lightweight champion Nate Campbell, but when he failed to make weight last month, and was subsequently stripped of his IBF/WBA/WBO titles, Warren had to look in a different direction for a fight for Khan.
Campbell has since moved up to light welterweight, and Juan Manuel Marquez is doing the same, leaving tough fighters like Juan Diaz, Ali Funeka and Yuri Romanov as potential opponents for Khan to have to fight.
Khan looked good at times in his 5th round stoppage over Barrera last Saturday night. He showed improvement with his defense especially, not getting hit nearly as much as he has in many of his fights. His hand speed was a lot quicker than Barrera’s, and he was able to hit him with fast two and three punch combinations for much of the fight. Barrera sustained a nasty cut on his forehead in the 1st round, though, and that seemed to cause him some problems trying to see at times.
However, even without the cut, Barrera, 35, looked destined to lose as he seemed way out of his class against the bigger, faster and more powerful Khan. In the 2nd round, Barrera landed his best punch of the fight, a hard left hook that caused Khan’s legs to sag for a fraction of a second. Khan, however, took the shot and continued firing back and moving, and didn’t give Barrera any more chances from then on to land any additional big shots.
By the 4th and 5th rounds, Khan was looking more and more confident, as he punished Barrera repeatedly with quick combinations to the head and body.
Khan’s trainer, Freddie Roach, said recently that Khan isn’t quite ready to step it up against a champion caliber opponent just yet, that he needed another couple of fights to improve before taking on a world class opponent. However, there may be a disconnect between Roach and Khan’s promoter Warren, because he seems to interested in putting him in fairly quickly against another top fighter for the vacant WBO lightweight title. Roach might be right, though.
Khan would seemingly be better served if he were to wait a couple of fights before stepping it up against a good lightweight. At least by doing that, Roach will have a better idea of how Khan will do when he does finally step it up, and will be able to further work on Khan’s defensive liabilities.
Up until now, Khan has been in with pretty much only soft opponents, although he’s found himself on the canvas five times in his 21 fights. To be fair to Khan, two of the knockdowns were at the hands of Colombian knockout artist Bredis Prescott, who walked right through Khan in September, stopping him in the 1st round. However, what was so bad about that fight was that Amir was staggered in the opening seconds of the fight by a jab from Prescott.
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