Khan-Maidana: What will Amir do if Marcos destroys him?

By Boxing News - 01/19/2010 - Comments

Image: Khan-Maidana: What will Amir do if Marcos destroys him?By Scott Gilfoid: It’s hard to forget the bleak image of Amir Khan getting bounced around on the canvas by lightweight Breidis Prescott when Amir tried his hand at stepping it up against a big puncher. It wasn’t even close. Prescott took Amir apart, hurting him with a simple jabs and then send him to the canvas back first moments later courtesy of a huge left hook to the head. Khan staggered to his feet looking like a drunk trying to find a bar stool and was immediately sent back down against with a series of monstrous shots.

This wouldn’t have any real important if not for the news that Khan, now the World Boxing Association light welterweight champion, agreeing to fight knockout artist Marcos Maidana in April. This is a big challenge for Khan, who has been more or less been put in against exclusively weaker punchers since his fight with Prescott.

Khan has bounced back from the defeat to Prescott, and has chalked up wins against Oisin Fagan, Marco Antonio Barrera, Andriy Kotelnik and Dmitriy Salita. Khan, 23, says that he’s learned his lesson from his defeat by Prescott and is a different fighter now. Khan has a new trainer with Freddie Roach, who has changed Khan into more of a mover rather than a fighter that used to throw lightning fast combinations. The change appears to have helped Khan, because he’s won his last four fights since the Prescott defeat.

But then again, Khan hasn’t faced anyone with power, so it’s hard to know for sure whether he’s learned a lesson like he says he has. Khan hasn’t been tested. It’s like a persona failing a math test. Afterwards their given some remedial math quizzes to build up their confidence to the point where they say they’re ready to retake the test they failed miserably on. They can’t know whether they’ll fail again until they take the test.

It looks like Khan is ready to take that test by facing the murderous punching Maidana, and I think Khan is going to fail miserably again. I don’t know what will happen to Khan if he gets knocked out again. I imagine if he gets destroyed by Maidana, Khan will probably switch out his trainers again like he did after his one round destruction against Prescott.

I have no idea what that would change other than Khan having a new style to learn. But beyond that, what can Khan do to rebuild his career if he suffers another brutal knockout loss? He’ll have Golden Boy Promotions working for him, so that’s a plus, but they can only do so much. Khan will have to be able to take the shots from whoever they put him in with.

My advice would be for Khan to move back down to lightweight or if possible to see if he can move to super featherweight where he would be huge at that weight class at 5’10”. At either lightweight or super featherweight, Khan would be better off possibly because the fighters are smaller, have shorter legs than Khan and he could always have a running chance to beat them.



Comments are closed.