By Dave Lahr: Trainer Freddie Roach feels that his pupil WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (21-1, 15 KO’s) is “similar in many ways to a young Manny Pacquiao,” according to an article by writer Gareth Davies from the telegraph.co.uk. Roach points out that both Khan and Pacquiao have great speed, and mentions that Pacquiao uses his speed to get the better of his opponents.

Khan, 22, isn’t quite as fast as Pacquiao, though, and he doesn’t sit down on his punches nearly as much as the Filipino star. Roach left this part out. However, Roach is correct that both fighters are similar in terms of hand speed, but as both differ in the rest of their games. Khan fights on the back foot, using lateral movement to avoid being an easy target.

Although Khan does come in and attack his opponents frequently, he’s much less aggressive than Pacquiao in his attacks. One reason for this is because Khan’s chin isn’t the strongest and he’s had problems against medium to heavy punchers, being knocked down often and knocked cold by Breidis Prescott last year. Pacquiao, luckily for him, hasn’t had to deal with this problem and has been able to attack his opponents without worrying about getting hurt.

Like a lot of people, Roach thinks that Khan was dismissed after his loss to Prescott, given up on as to weak of chin to amount to anything. Roach feels that the win over Kotelnik proved people wrong. Roach may be right, but that’s still unclear as of now. The jury is still out on whether Khan has proven anyone wrong about him, because Kotelnik is hardly a big puncher and was considered to be the weakest of the light welterweight champions going into the fight.

Khan beat a fighter without much power; hence he didn’t have to worry about getting hit with anything big from Kotelnik. Roach made sure that Khan wouldn’t get hurt by having him employ a fight strategy which consisted of Khan using constant circling movement and quick in and out attacks.

Khan, to his credit, stuck to the game plan rigidly, only rarely veering off course late in the fight. It worked perfectly for Khan, and he ended up winning the fight by a lopsided 12 round decision. However, Khan’s chin was probably more than good enough to handle Kotelnik’s weak shots, even if Khan had stood and slugged with Kotelnik for 12 rounds.

Khan may have a weak chin, but he probably could have handled the weak shots that Kotelnik was hitting him with if he stood and traded with him for 12 rounds. Khan would have had a much better chance of ending the fight inside the distance if he had used his old style of fighting. The extra running that Roach had him employ seemed like overkill, a waste of time against a light hitter like Kotelnik.

Believe me, if Khan doesn’t have the chin to take the light shots from a fighter like Kotelnik, then he likely never will be good enough to be the likes of Marcos Maidana, Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt, Victor Ortiz and Mike Alvarado, all of whom hit much harder than Kotelnik.