By William Mackay: Freddie Roach, the trainer for WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan, says he sees a lot of similarities between the 23-year-old Khan and his number #1 fighter Manny Pacquiao. In an article at Reuters. Roach says “I see a lot of Manny in him [Khan]. They’re very similar in a lot of aspects.” Roach has said in the past that he believes that Khan can become a great one like Pacquiao.

However, it’s difficult for the average fan to see what Roach is talking about other than the similarities in hand speed. For the most part, Khan and Pacquiao seem to be completely different fighters in almost every aspect of their game. Defensively, I’d say Khan is a lot better than Pacquiao was at 23. Back then, Pacquiao took a lot of shots in his fights. In fact, Pacquiao still gets hit a whole lot when he’s coming forward. He’s improved immensely in that area but he still gets hit a lot because he takes a lot of chances.

Pacquiao has a much better chin than Khan and always did have a good chin. Pacquiao can be hurt, but he wasn’t getting staggered like Khan has been earlier in his career. Pacquiao is a lot tougher. He’s willing to take punishment in order to inflict his own shots. That’s not how Khan is. He doesn’t like to take a lot of shots and I don’t think his chin is good enough for him to ever fight the same way that Pacquiao does.

I think Roach sees the blazing hand speed from Khan and the good ring movement and he’s thinking that he may have another Pacquiao-like fighter. That’s probably not going to happen unless Khan’s chin gets a lot better.

At 23, Pacquiao was already an awesome fighter and pretty much fearless. I can’t say the same thing for Khan. He seems very vulnerable and incomplete. Maybe his chin will get better in the future, but then again maybe it wont. If he can’t take a big hit, Khan will get exposed when he finally steps it up against good fighters like Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander and Marcos Maidana. In the meantime, Khan will probably keep taking on light hitters like Paulie Malignaggi. Khan is very good against those kinds of fighters, but we don’t know how good he is against punches because he’s only fought one – Breidis Prescott – and been knocked out in one rounds.