Can Roach Turn Khan Into Another Pacquiao?

By Boxing News - 05/10/2009 - Comments

khan45646449By Dave Lahr: Trainer Freddie Roach takes pride in his training of excellent fighters and helping the careers of more establish boxers that he takes on from time to time. Roach obviously doesn’t always pick winners, but it seems like lately he’s been doing well with Manny Pacquiao, at least for the time being that is. One fighter that Roach has begun training in the past year is British lightweight Amir Khan, who Roach feels can be one of the pound-for-pound best boxers in two years.

Since Roach has done such a remarkable job with fixing the holes in Pacquiao’s game, I wonder if Roach can improve the 22-year-old Khan and make him as good as Pacquiao within two to three years time. Khan is definitely a project, because before Roach got a hold of Khan, he had been knocked out in the 1st round by Colombian knockout artist Breidis Prescott last year in September 2008.

Khan’s chin, his weak point, had also given him problems in other bouts against Michael Gomez, Willie Limond and Rachid Drilzane. Now Roach is outstanding at teaching boxing skills, but as far as I know, Roach has never been able to fix a bad chin.

And that is going to be the major hurdle that Roach and Khan are going to need to get over before Khan can ever hope to be as good as Pacquiao. By the time that Pacquiao was 22, he had already picked up the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Organization super bantamweight crowns.

Granted, the opposition was pretty limited, but Pacquiao did have a win over Agapito Sanchez, a respectable fighter. In contrast, Khan has no similar titles to compare with Pacquiao, although Khan is set to challenge Andriy Kotelnik, the WBA light welterweight champion, on June 27th at the O2 Arena, in London, England.

If Khan can pick up that title, which many boxing fans believe that he can, then Khan could very well be on his way to accomplishing some of the things that Pacquiao has done in his career. Khan already has the building blocks for greatness – speed, power, good foot movement, and decent size at lightweight.

Offensively, Khan is one of the best at lightweight or light welterweight. You can’t deny that Khan has the tool offensively to make him a champion for a long time to come. However, defensively it’s a whole different matter for Khan. He has a poor defense, and rarely blocks incoming fire.

That could be because Khan has spent much of his career focusing on his offensive skills and hasn’t put in the work needed to be a good defensive fighter. Khan often seems to get caught up in the crowd applause and appears to try and please the boxing fans at ringside by attempting to score impressive knockouts.

This causes Khan to get hit much more than he would normally would by lesser fighters. However, when Khan wants to box he can, and can be very hard to hit while he’s on the move jabbing repeatedly.

Khan doesn’t need to be taught how to throw right hooks like Pacquiao previously did, because Khan already is set offensively. Khan just needs to learn how to protect his chin so that he can avoid getting knocked out in the future. The good thing is that Khan has one of the best trainers on the planet in Roach, and Khan will be further helped by being able to spar regularly with Manny Pacquiao.



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