By William Mackay: With Manny Pacquiao being on the verge of retirement in one or possibly two more fights, trainer Freddie Roach needs a fighter to step in an fill the gap that Pacquiao will be leaving when he retires from boxing. Unfortunately, Roach doesn’t have anyone approaching the ability of Pacquiao except for possibly the 23-year-old Khan. Roach has said that Khan’s skills remind him a lot of Pacquiao and he thinks he can become a star like Pacquiao, but can Roach transform Khan into another Pacquiao in three or four years.

Khan says himself that he’s four years away from his prime, and that time he’ll be at his very best. If Roach is still Khan’s trainer at that point in time will Khan be on the level of Pacquiao or will Khan have been exposed many times by then and relegated to a gate keeper status? Khan can’t get to the level of Pacquiao if he’s put in with soft fighters all his career or ones that are a division below him.

I think Khan can continue to pick up wins that way and make himself better known but it probably won’t improve him much if he’s being matched against older fighters, ones that have no power to test his chin and fighters in the lightweight division. Pacquiao, for the most part, took on the best fighters while he was coming up. Yeah, there’s a lot of fighters that he didn’t fight and he does seem to steered consistently towards more stationary fighters rather than ones that can move and box.

However, Pacquiao has done well against the opposition that he’s been matched against and that’s all you can ask from him. Perhaps the one thing that could prevent Khan from becoming another Pacquiao is his chin. Khan has had problems in the past being able to take hard shots and he failed miserably in the one time he was put in with a fighter that could push a little with Breidis Prescott.

Khan hasn’t had any similar bad experiences since that loss, but then he’s been put in against weaker punchers. At some point, Khan will have to be put in with a fighter that can punch you would think. It’s possibly for Khan to be steered away from punchers his entire career, but it wouldn’t be very easy to do. The one fighter that could be the biggest threat to Khan right now is Marcos Maidana.

But that problem could take care of itself if Maidana is beaten by someone else before Khan is absolutely forced to fight him or risk being stripped. But if Roach wants to turn Khan into another Pacquiao, then he’s going to have to teach Khan how to beat sluggers like Maidana.

That could be the only thing that separates Khan from being as good as Pacquiao and dominating for a lot of years. He’s got to know how to handle a fighter that can punch. We learned nothing from Khan’s win over Paulie Malignaggi on May 15th. They should have matched Khan up with someone that could punch a little so that he could actually learn something instead of wasting time on someone that posed no threat.