By Sean McDaniel: To listen to unbeaten Dmitriy Salita talk it sounds like World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan is in a whole lot of trouble this Saturday night. Salita is determined to defeat Khan and capture the title, which he feels is his. “Amir Khan has my belt and I’ve trained very hard to take it and will do whatever is necessary to bring it back home with me,” Salita says.
Khan better hope he’s ready for Salita, because by reading some of Khan’s recent comments in the media, he seems to be looking past Salita and thinking about fights against Ricky Hatton and Juan Manuel Marquez. Salita is aware of this and plans on making Khan pay by knocking him out on December 5th.
Salita is the underdog for the fight, but no one knows how good he really is and what he’s capable of doing because he hasn’t fought anyone in the top 15 as of yet. Khan doesn’t have that much experience either against top level opposition, losing to Breidis Prescott in a 1st round knockout last year, beating an old Marco Antonio Barrera on a 5th round technical decision and then winning a 12 round decision over Andriy Kotelnik in his last fight.
The Kotelnik fight was impressive, but Khan was facing a weak puncher and he still ran for most of the fight from Kotelnik. Salita appears to have more power than Kotelnik and he could be trouble for Khan if he connects with a big shot on Khan’s vulnerable chin.
Salita says about Khan, “Khan’s a chinny guy and there’s nothing he can do about, it’s just the way he’s built.” Khan takes exception with that description and says he going to get even with Salita in the ring on Saturday. Much of Khan’s reputation for having a weak chin is due to him being knocked down by relatively light punchers while working his way up the pro latter. It didn’t help Khan any that he was destroyed in the 1st round by the first real puncher that he’s faced in his career in his knockout loss to Prescott.
Khan blames the loss on him being careless. That may be, because Khan did go right out and try to slug with Prescott in the opening seconds of the fight. However, Khan initially wasn’t hurt by a power punch from Prescott. He was nailed by a jab of all things and staggered badly. After getting hit with a hard jab from Prescott, Khan was vulnerable for anything that Prescott threw after that.
One would hope that Khan doesn’t take Salita for granted because Salita will be putting all he has in every shot looking to take Khan’s title. Salita hasn’t tasted the big money that Khan has and is hungry to win a title and start getting paid well. With Salita desperately wanting this win, Khan might be better off staying as clear of Salita as possible to avoid getting rocked by one of Salita’s big shots and taken out again.
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