By William Mackay: Ricky Hatton believes that World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan (22-1, 16 KO’s) will easily beat former IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (27-3, 5 KO’s) when they meet up on May 15th in Madison Square Garden, in New York. In his column at the Manchestereveningnews.co.uk, Hatton says “Having beaten Malignaggi comfortably myself, I do not envisage any problems for Amir and expect him to win easily.” Well, Hatton has been wrong before, so maybe he could end up on the wrong side of this pick as well.

Hatton had an advantage in his fight that Khan doesn’t. Hatton had a pretty good chin and was able to take some of Malignaggi’s feather fisted shots. With Khan, you just never know. If a fighter sticks around for the full 12 rounds, there’s a chance that sooner or later he could get lucky and knock Khan’s block off with something big. Malignaggi is more into just making contact with his opponents and usually fighting off his back foot to let him get away quickly.

However, as we saw in his last fight against Juan Diaz, he can load up when he has his opponent off balance and not expecting a shot coming at him. Khan is a fighter that can go at any moment if he gets hit just right, so I can’t say for a fact that Khan will win easily against a feather fisted fighter like Malignaggi with 100% accuracy. There’s always that chance that Khan might get that jaw tapped and we could see a new WBA light welterweight champion on the 15th.

You can say this: Malignaggi is going to be coming to fight. He doesn’t want his career to end and a lot right now, especially a knockout loss, would really hurt Malignaggi in getting big paydays in the future. Malignaggi will be gunning to try and take Khan out at some point in the fight. He obviously must realize that he has little chance of out-boxing Khan because of the British fighters’ superior hand speed and work rate. This is why Malignaggi is going to have to make the best of every opportunity he has to try and put Khan down for the count.

If Malignaggi has seen Khan’s 1st round knockout loss to Breidis Prescott, he will likely have noticed that Khan is a sucker for a wide hook. He seems unable, for some reason, to track the arc of them and he gets hit with them cleanly every time. That might be one thing that Malignaggi could pick up on and use against Khan to try and get him out of there. He won’t do well if he tries to throw only straight punches and move all night long. In that case, Khan will probably easily beat Malignaggi with his superior speed and work rate. Malignaggi has to loop his shots and take advantage of Khan’s aggressiveness. Khan will be more aggressive than usual because he wants to look good and because his trainer Freddie Roach will be pushing him to try and score a knockout over Malignaggi.