By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) may have the superior hand speed, movement and boxing skills compared to World Boxing Association light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (29-1, 27 KO’s), but what Khan doesn’t have is the chin and you have to have a good chin to beat Maidana. The Argentinean fighter has only been beaten once in his career by Andriy Kotelnik in 2009. And in that fight, Kotelnik took a massive amount of punishment and looked as if he had been run over by a truck.

I’ve never seen Kotelnik’s face look so horrible. I’m aware of the fact that Kotelnik thinks that Khan can beat Maidana, but that would require Khan to be able to handle an entire fights’ worth of big shots from Maidana. I don’t think Khan’s chin is good enough to even handle six rounds of power shots from Maidana. I can see Khan getting knocked out in one or two rounds. As soon as Maidana lands his first hard shot, I think Khan will fold. Khan hasn’t been in with a big puncher since 2008.

He’s beaten Kotelnik, a light puncher, Dmitri Salita, another light puncher, Paulie Malignaggi, a pillow puncher, Osin Fagan, a light puncher, and Marco Antonio Barrera, a blown up super featherweight. Beating those guys doesn’t mean that Khan’s chin is capable of withstanding the full force shots from Maidana. I don’t care if Maidana looked bad in beating DeMarcus Corley in his last fight. Corley isn’t Khan and he was in trouble anyway against Maidana. I think Maidana didn’t take Corley seriously and wasn’t properly motivated or trained for that bout.

Maidana looked like he was carrying around and extra 10 pounds of fat on his frame because you could see the fat around his midsection. He never looked like that in his previous bouts. You can bet that when Maidana fights Khan, he will be in tip top shape and completely motivated to beat him and take his title. I see this as an easy win for Maidana. It won’t be like his grueling 6th round stoppage of Victor Ortiz because Khan won’t be willing to slug it out with Maidana like Ortiz did.

Simply put, Khan will run all night and try to win on throwing jabs alone. But you can’t win a fight throwing nothing but jabs and avoid getting hit entirely. Maidana is going to catch Khan at some point and when that happens Khan is going to get flattened flatter than a pan cake. They better bring smelling salts because I see Maidana knocking Khan completely out cold.