By William Mackay: In the final bit of sparring in the Philippines before leaving to the United States to train at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles, CA, Manny Pacquiao reportedly gave WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan some problems in their sparring session. Khan had been talking about doing well with Pacquiao in their previous sparring sessions, describing them as 50-50 with both fighters going well. But it looks like Pacquiao took things a little more serious in this final bit of sparring before leaving to the U.S., as writer Ronnie Nathanielsz from the www.inquirer.net said this about the Pacquiao-Khan sparring session: “Pacquiao showed what he’s capable of doing in a final 30-second burst at the end of the third round when he rocked Khan.” It looks like Pacquiao stopped playing around and taking it easy on Khan and showed him a little taste of what Khan would be experiencing if he were to really be fighting Pacquiao and not just sparring.

Khan said “With Manny, you can’t be too confident. You see what he did? I had to get my defense up. Manny hits hard but I didn’t get hurt. But he’s been training hard all week and when he spars, it’s just 50 or 60 percent.” Khan is saying he didn’t get hurt, but had Pacquiao not been wearing big 16 ounce gloves and if there wasn’t head gear being worn, I’m not so certain that Khan would be saying the same thing. My guess is Khan would have been knocked out by Pacquiao in that round. It only took 30 seconds of serious fighting from Pacquiao do big time damage, and that was with huge gloves and head gear.

I don’t like Khan’s chances against Pacquiao with 10 ounce gloves and no hear protection. This shows you that Khan needs to start moving more when he faces fighters with power like Pacquiao and Marcos Maidana. Khan will be facing Maidana, a fighter that arguably hits harder than Pacquiao, on December 11th. If Khan is getting rocked by Pacquiao, what are his chances against the hard hitting Maidana?