By Jason Kim: Unbeaten challenger Dmitriy Salita (30-0-1, 16 KO’s) isn’t the least bit intimidated by World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan (21-1, 15 KO’s), seeing him as damaged goods because of a brutal knockout that Khan experienced last year in a 1st round blow out loss to knockout artist Breidis Prescott in September 2008. Salita, 27, says in an article at Khaleej Times “It is not a secret that his [Khan] chin is not great. Medically speaking, there’s no way that someone can recover from a devastating knockout that Amir suffered only a year ago.”

Salita may actually be right about this. In many instances, it can take more than year for a fighter to fully recover from a bad knockout like the one that Khan suffered against Prescott. Some fighters never recover and remain very susceptible to future knockouts, even when not hit that hard. Since Khan was knocked out last year, he’s been pitted against lighter punchers and not had to face anyone near as powerful as Prescott.

Salita may not be a huge puncher either, but he is probably the hardest hitter since Khan faced Prescott. Whether Khan has been protected from big punchers are not since his loss to Prescott is debatable. But one this is known, he hasn’t gone after Prescott looking to get revenge. That’s kind of telling in a way. However, Prescott is fighting on the undercard of Khan’s bout on Saturday night against Kevin Mitchell. Perhaps then if both Khan and Prescott win impressively, Khan will have the perfect opponent for him to fight in the United States next year.

Khan says that he plans on fighting in the U.S. from now on in hopes of making it big over there and becoming a huge pay-per-view start like Manny Pacquiao. However, Khan’s future may end up being short and unsuccessful if Salita is correct in his thoughts about Khan’s ability to absorb punishment without getting knocked out again.

Salita says “It’s not just because of Prescott that he’s [Khan] vulnerable. He has been knocked down a whole bunch of other times.” Salita is correct about this as well. Although Khan supporters are quick to say that all of those knockdowns have been flash knockdowns in which Khan was dropped but not hurt. Having seen each of those occasions myself, I think Khan has been hurt at least three to four times in his 22 fight pro career. Khan has faced one big puncher, Prescott, with the rest of them being fighters with average to low power.

Salita would probably fall in the range of the upper scale in terms of power. But what Salita doesn’t have is hand speed. He’s very slow, a lot slower than many of Khan’s previous opponents. That might not mean anything, because Salita has a good chin. But it does make it almost certain that he’s going to have to take a lot of punishment from Khan and will have to be able to take Khan’s flurries without going down.

Khan can be dangerous because when he throws a lot of fast shots, he can get a stoppage even if he doesn’t knock his opponent down. All it will take is a flurry of 15 to 20 unanswered shots and the referee will likely step in and stop the bout much in the same way that the Roy Jones Jr. vs. Danny Green bout was stopped after Jones was hit with a flurry from Green.