By Scott Gilfoid: I still remember how excited Amir Khan was when he got a new trainer Jorge Rubio shortly before Khan’s fight with Breidis Prescott in 2008. Khan was talking nonstop about how great Rubio was, but then when Khan got stretched out in the 1st round by Prescott, Rubio quickly was gone, replaced by Freddie Roach. Now it’s Roach who is the one with all the answers for Khan, the one that’s supposed to make him a great fighter. It’s like Roach is the bottle that Khan thinks will unlock all his dreams.
However, Khan has his first big fight since the Prescott fight coming up on December 11th against knockout puncher Marcos Maidana, and I have a strong suspicion that Khan is going to get knocked out in the same fashion as he was in the Prescott fight. I just don’t see it going any other way. Khan has been held back since the Prescott fight and put in with fighters with weak power, and this has given the illusion that Khan has progressed as a fighter. It’s even had the effect of fooling Khan into believing he’s good enough to fight and beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. as early as next year. It’s actually quite sad, really. You put poor Khan in with weak punchers so that he doesn’t have to get knocked out, and all of a sudden he’s developed a pipe dream about being the best fighter in the light welterweight division and worthy to face Mayweather.
It’s too bad that his dreams about to come to an end next month when Maidana wrecks them with one of his powerful right hands. Okay, so back to the Roach question. I wonder what happens with Roach once Khan gets knocked out again? Will Roach leave on his own or will Khan shuck him to the side, feeling he needs a fall guy to take the hit for being knocked out. I personally think Rubio was a good trainer and it wasn’t his fault that Khan got knocked out by Prescott. It wasn’t like Prescott was a great fighter or anything.
It was simply a case where Khan couldn’t handle Prescott’s power and there’s not a trainer alive that would have made that outcome any different than it was. Prescott was going to catch up to Khan sooner or later and knock him out, and there’s no one that could have prevented that from happening, certainly not Roach. Khan could have had Roach sitting in the corner like a choirboy, jabbering at him about ‘staying away’ from Prescott, and Khan still would have been knocked out. So what happens to Roach when and if he gets knocked out by Maidana? Will Khan keep Roach or ditch him and look for another miracle worker that can tell him what he wants to hear about his chin problem being related to having skinny legs. I can’t believe Roach used that one on Khan, as that’s why fighters get knocked out.
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