Froch: “Why Doesn’t He [Khan] Go and Get The Rematch With Prescott?”

By Boxing News - 07/31/2009 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch was recently expressing his dissatisfaction with newly crowned World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan’s performance against Ukrainian Andriy Kotelnik on July 18th, calling it “Boring.” Froch wonders why about Khan, asking the question “Why doesn’t he [Khan] go and get a rematch with Prescott?” This is a good question and one that’s been on the minds of many in the boxing world when looking at the career of the 22-year-old Khan.

Why doesn’t he try and avenge his 1st round knockout of Breidis Prescott? While Khan wants to be respected and thought of as a potential superstar in the sport, he isn’t doing the things that he needs to do to get to that level. Fighting a weaker puncher like Kotelnik, who a lot of people felt was the weakest of the light welterweight champions, did little to dispel the notion that Khan has a glass chin and can’t take a heavy shot without being knocked out.

Khan changed trainers after his loss to Prescott last year and signed up Freddie Roach, an American trainer known for having worked wonders in refining the crude fighting style of Manny Pacquiao. Roach has made some changes to Khan’s style of fighting and has made him more of a mover and defensively-oriented fighter.

From the outside appearances, Khan has improved since being beaten by Prescott, but given that Khan hasn’t faced a real threat since that fight, you can’t really tell for sure. Beating Kotelnik isn’t a real big deal because he doesn’t have much of a punch and wasn’t ever a real danger to test Khan’s weak chin.

Roach, however, seems to think that Khan is the finished product now and won’t be making any more mistakes like he did in his fight with Prescott. That may or may not be true, but unless they put Khan in with Prescott in a rematch or another big puncher like Marcos Maidana or Victor Ortiz, we won’t know for sure.

Whatever the case, the Prescott loss remains a dark stain on Khan’s career and is hard to ignore no matter how many Kotelnik type fighters that Khan fights in the future.

Froch thinks that Khan is being protected from Prescott by Amir’s promoter. “Warren protects all his fighters and Khan’s definitely being protected too much,” Froch says in an article from The Sun. The problem is that unless Khan goes after a rematch with Prescott and try to prove people wrong about his weak chin, he’ll look to many people as if he’s ducking Prescott. Froch thinks that Khan will never be a great fighter until his promoter stops protecting him so much.

As for Khan’s recent fight with Kotelnik, Froch wasn’t impressed with the fight, calling it a “Safety first” type approach and saying that Khan has to fight this way to guard his fragile chin. Froch thinks that if Khan takes a big hit from someone, he’ll go down. Froch points out that Khan is fighting at a distance now, jabbing and keeping his guard tight to prevent from getting nailed by a big shot. He sees him as a champion over a weak division. Froch is wrong about that.

The light welterweight division is actually pretty good with fighters like Timothy Bradley, Maidana, Kendall Holt, Victor Ortiz, Nate Campbell, Victor Cayo, Ricky Hatton, Mike Alvarado, Juan Diaz, Randall Bailey, Junior Witter, Devon Alexander and Joan Guzman. The problem is Khan needs to fight some of these guys and not step around them looking for weaker opponents.



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