Look For Khan To Stop Barrera

By Boxing News - 03/13/2009 - Comments

khan4345634By Dave Lahr: Make no mistake about it, Marco Antonio Barrera (65-6, 43 KOs) will be coming to fight hard on Saturday night and unless lightweight Amir Khan (19-1, 15 KOs) brings his A-game, he might find himself on the canvas with his career in utter shambles. However, my guess is that Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach has set up the perfect game plan to defeat Barrera on Saturday night at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, Lancashire.

It isn’t as if Roach doesn’t have a lot to work with. After all, not only is Khan the significantly bigger fighter at 5’10” compared to the 5’6″ for Barrera, but Khan is also much faster of hands, has a better work rate and is 13 years younger at 22 compared to the 35 for Barrera. Besides that, Khan has had much less wear and tear on his body as most of his fights have been terribly one-sided affairs with him winning easily without having to take much punishment in the process.

A lot of credit must go to his shrewd promoter Frank Warren for that, who has successfully shielded Khan from the better fighters in the top echelon of the lightweight division. His one attempt at fighting a lower level fighter in the top 15, a fight against Breidis Prescott, was a total disaster with Khan being destroyed in a one round blow out.

However, that more of a case of Khan ignoring the game plan and trying to go out and slug with a known slugger. If Khan had stuck with his jab, fought on the outside, and avoided exchanges with Prescott, there’s a good chance Amir would have won that fight rather than being blown out the way he was.

However, he’s learned from his mistake and looked like a much different fighter in his next fight against Oisin Fagan, whom he took out in the 2nd round in December 2008. In that fight, Khan avoided big exchanges and focused on using his jab and movement.

Tomorrow night, look for Khan to use a similar style to negate many of Barrera’s boxing skills. Khan surely won’t make the mistake of standing directly in front of Barrera like so many of his other opponents before in the past. Barrera’s wars with Erik Morales, Juan Manuel Marquez and Rocky Juarez were all cases of fighters willing to stand and trade with him.

Barrera does well when he’s faced against those types of fighters. When he’s put in with a fighter with good movement, like in the case of his two losses to Manny Pacquiao, Barrera tends to struggle badly. It’s for this reason you can expect Khan to stay strictly on the outside and avoiding Barrera like the plague.

Despite what people have been saying about this fight being a potential career killer for Khan should he lose, I tend to disagree. At 22, he’s still more than young enough to recover from a loss and come back to win titles in England and then later on in the world level.

Naturally, it won’t be easy, especially if he gets knocked out again. I don’t see that as happening, but even if it does, I think Roach will make the needed adjustments to retool Khan’s skills and make him even more of a mover, jabber and clincher.

In a worst case scenario, Khan’s style can be changed to be more like IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who generally jabs and clinches a great deal. It’s not pretty to watch but he’s very effective at it and allows him to protect his weak chin from the bigger punchers in the heavyweight division.

This may be what Roach would need to do with Khan, although I’m hoping it doesn’t get to that. It would be the nuclear option, because in turning Khan into a fighter like that, it would take away much of the excitement that he has.



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