By William Mackay: As I look over the upcoming title fight on May 15th between WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (22-1 16 KO’s) and Paulie Malignaggi (27-3, 5 KO’s), I wonder whether Khan’s sometimes brittle chin will fail him once again. It’s been a couple of years since Khan was tapped on the chin and knocked out by Breidis Prescott in September 2008, and it seems like another knockout is long overdue for Khan. This fight has the right ingredients for Khan to be knocked out once again – Amir making his debut in the United States, fighting in front of a large crowd and looking to make impressive performance.

Malignaggi may have been hand-picked specifically because of total lack of punching power, but he can punch hard enough if Khan leaves his fragile out to dry long enough for him to tap it with a decent shot. When a fighter has a weak chin, you never know when they’re going to get stretched again. This is the case for this fight. Khan’s chin is vulnerable area for him, putting him at a lot of risk to getting knocked out.

Khan will be relying more on his fragile chin to carry him to victory in this fight because he’s going to be trying to take Malignaggi apart as fast as he can to get an impressive win for the U.S. crowd. Khan will come out fast trying to duplicate more or less the results of his 1st round knockout win in his last fight against Dmitriy Salita last December.

All it will take is for Malignaggi to sit down on one hard right hand or left hook and we could be seeing Khan flat on his back counting starts while the referee motions for the ringside doctor to render assistance to the badly hurt Khan. Amir was staggered briefly in the 2nd round in his fight against 36-year-old Marco Antonio Barrera in March of last year, and Barrera had only recently moved up form super featherweight when he fought Khan.

Malignaggi probably punches at least as hard as Barrera when he loads up on his punches. Khan will be much more of a risk taker in the Malignaggi fight, because he has to if he wants to become a future star in America. He won’t be able to win over fans by running around the ring all night long like he did in the Andriy Kotelnik fight.