By Scott Gilfoid: I wonder if World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch just woke up from a 100 year sleep or something, because when he said that he thought Amir Khan looked boring after watching five rounds of his fight with Andriy Kotelnik, it really wasn’t all that enlightening. I hate to break this news to Froch, but Khan has been boring to watch for some time.

Ever since Khan’s head got parked in the 3rd round of the seats by Breidis Prescott in a 1st round blowout loss, Khan has been painfully boring to watch. The reason why is being he’s so focused on protecting his glass chin and isn’t putting in the effort to throw flashy punches or add power to his shots like he did previously.

I’ll admit right away that I never liked Khan’s weak chin, but I thought he had the best offensive skills in the lightweight division. Unfortunately, I can’t say that now. Khan has morphed into one of the most safety first, boring fighters in the light welterweight division. And it doesn’t matter to me that Khan holds the World Boxing Association title right now, because he still is tedious to watch now that he’s not letting his hands go like he used to.

I guess his new trainer Freddie Roach is partly to blame for that. Roach seems to have turned Khan into an ostrich, making him protect his head from the threat any of power shots from his opponents. Against the powder puff shots from Kotelnik, you’d think that Roach would have given Khan the green light to let his hands to go, but that doesn’t appear the case.

All I heard from Roach in the corner was ‘keep your hands up” and “keep circling the ring.” With that kind of fighting, is it any wonder why Froch sees Khan as a boring fighter. I respect Froch for speaking up, but before long there’s going to be many more people in the future chiming in with the same thoughts unless Khan starts showing some gonads by standing his ground more and letting his punches fly.

I think Roach messed Khan up with his tinkering with his offense. Khan would have easily beaten Kotelnik with his old style and may be forced a stoppage. I don’t think for a second that Khan hits as hard as slugger Marcos Maidana, but his punches are plenty fast enough that he could have caught Kotelnik with a shot that he didn’t see coming and put him down had Khan been punching with conviction instead of on the back foot.

I think what Roach is in the process of doing with Khan is turning him into another Felix Sturm type fighter, a boxer that circles the ring a lot, jabbing, keeping his guard up all times, and rarely sitting down on his punches. Like Sturm, I see Khan taking it easy as he can with his non mandatory opponents by picking the weakest of the lot, and then fighting defensively when fighting a good opponent.

Unlike Sturm, though, I see Khan vacating his title when the day comes for Maidana to be his mandatory challenger. I don’t think he’s going to be put in with the Argentinean slugger, just like he probably won’t be matched against Prescott again.