By Scott Gilfoid: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) stopped Paulie Malignaggi (27-4, 5 KO’s) in the 11th round last Saturday night in Khan’s debut fight in the United States. After only one fight in the U.S. against the fading Malignaggi, Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach has already declared that Khan can beat the other 140 pounders in the division. I don’t know if I agree with that. While Khan did get the win over the light hitting Malignaggi, Khan looked really tired by the 10th round and his face was badly marked up by Malignaggi’s weak shots. I don’t know about what Roach thinks on this matter, but I don’t see this as a good sign.

Khan, if he was all that, should have been able to breeze through Malignaggi without looking fatigued and without getting as marked up as he did. Khan looked like he had gone through a war by the end of the fight, even though he really wasn’t getting hit all that much by Malignaggi. If you look at what Khan faced in the Malignaggi fight and then figure the kind of effort and punishment that he would need to take in order to beat fighters like Marcos Maidana, Devon Alexander, Timothy Bradley and Victor Ortiz, I don’t think this bodes well as a predictor for the future.

Right now, Khan is riding the crest of success in beating Malignaggi, but what does that win really mean when Khan is looking tired and getting marked up badly? What meaning is there in beating Malignaggi and looking tired when there are much tougher fights ahead of him? Instead of getting excited about it and seeing Khan as already the best in the light welterweight division, Roach needs to be looking at Khan’s performance with a more realistic look and see the flaws that Khan showed. Khan beat a guy that was hand-picked for him to beat, yet still got marked up and couldn’t take him out until the 11th round.

I have hard time seeing Malignaggi lasting long against Maidana, Bradley, Ortiz or Alexander. I think Malignaggi would take terrifying punishment against any of those fighters and wouldn’t make it anywhere close to the 11th round. Can you imagine what Maidana would do against a stationary fighter like Malignaggi? In the past, Malignaggi used to be able to move well. However, last Saturday night his legs appeared to be completely gone. It was all he could do to slowly move around the ring like an aging heavyweight. If he fought like that against Maidana, Malignaggi would be ripped apart and sent into dream land by the 5th or 6th rounds.

I think Roach needs to take a second look at the Khan-Malignaggi fight like I have and seen the flaws that Khan showed in that fight, because right now I think he’d be knocked out by any of those aforementioned fighters. He’s a good basic fighter, but he seems to be lacking in the chin and the stamina department. His defense needs work too. Khan need to adopt a different style of fighting if he wants to beat the better light welterweights, because he’s going to run out of gas against them and if he takes shots, I can see him breaking down and getting stopped again.