By Nick Bannister: What a night, and what a fight. Four of the top 10 light welterweights fight on the same card, and two of them engage in a definate fight of the year contender. If boxing keeps up the quality of both the matchups and the performances of the last 6 weeks, it certainly has a bright future. I feel genuiely privileged to have seen Khan-Maidana, and was certainly kept interested by Ortiz-Peterson. Having seen two excellent matchups, what do we now know about the fighters that we didn’t know before, and how has last night’s fights affected the overall picture at 140lbs?

First, to Ortiz-Peterson. I personally disagreed with the judges, and had it as a close decision win for Ortiz. I thought he hurt Peterson more than Peterson hurt him, won more rounds, and got two knockdowns to none. In my book, Peterson’s obviously superior technique and accuracy was not enough to win, even if he is certainly more of a boxer than Ortiz. Regardless of the possible mistakes on the judges part, I think the main thing that the fight told us is that neither guy is quite up to the level of the best in the division, just as they weren’t last year when Alexander was outpointed by Bradley and Ortiz stopped by Maidana.

Peterson is a classy fighter. Accurate, a good counter puncher, with nice technique and decent speed to go with long arms. However, he lacks power, failing to trouble Ortiz at all in 10 rounds, and with a KO ratio of 14 in 28 fights, and without a significant KO on his record, he is always going to struggle against the best guys, who appear able to walk through what he can throw. Lamont is a highly likeable fighter, and his ability to overcome the adversity life has thrown at him is admirable, but he isn’t as good a boxer as Khan or Bradley, he doesn’t hit as hard as Maidana or Ortiz, and he isn’t the athlete that Alexander is. There is no shame in being a top 10 light welterweight, and Lamont Peterson is, but unless he gets to Marquez levels of counter punching accuracy or finds a lot of power from somewhere, he isn’t going to be a threat to the very best in the division.

Victor Ortiz is not a classy boxer at all, but he is a hell of a puncher. He throws an awful lot of shots, misses most of them, but troubles his opponents whenever he lands. He was very big tonight, going in to the ring at 156lbs, and after a very slow start he started to hurt Peterson, knocking him down twice and physically bullying him with the big weight advantage. Unlike Peterson, his power will be a concern for anyone in the division, even if he isn’t quite at one punch KO levels. He also showed that his chin can stand stand up to taking clean shots, and that he has the heart to stand in and trade, even if he wasn’t tested to the fullest. His quitting against Maidana was still obviously on his mind, as he spent the first two rounds dancing, and a lot of the fight backing up. That loss obviously badly affected him, and it is only natural that he will take time to find his way back, but his style last night didn’t suit his skills, and that will need to be remedied if he is to get to the level his talent deserves. He will also need to remedy his accuracy, as landing at 21% is simply not good enough to give him a chance against precision boxers like Bradley and Khan. At 23, Ortiz is still young enough to remedy the psychological and technical flaws in his game, but those flaws will need adressing before he steps anywhere near the big 4 of Khan, Bradley, Alexander or Maidana.

On to Khan-Maidana. This was a superb fight between two very different boxers, and I thought that the judges got it about right. Maidana certainly hurt Khan late on, and had the Briton hanging on, but he didn’t get a knockdown, let alone a knockout, and that was what he needed after being thoroughly outboxed for most of the first 9 rounds and getting knocked down in the first. At times in the early stages the difference in skill was so wide as to be almost embarrassing, with Khan landing four and five punch combinations without Maidana landing anything back. At the end Maidana was totally overwhelming, and I was amazed by his ability to push through the gulf in talent, and his obvious exhaustion, to make his power the major factor in the fight. Even with 10 seconds left, I wasn’t sure if Khan would get through the fight, but having done so, he deserved the unanimous decision.

The obvious thing that this fight told us was that Khan has got over the problems with his chin that has seen him go down 5 times against 4 different opponents, including his 54 second blowout against Prescott. Maidana hit him with everything and the kitchen sink, and although he was seriously hurt, and at times on very wobbly legs, he managed to stay upright, and refused to hold on even when it would have been smarter to do so. If Khan can stand up to the assault Maidana launched, he is unlikely to be troubled by the power of the other big players at 140, or even 147 should he decide to move up the the future.

In addition to answering questions about his chin, Khan reiterated that he is the fastest and best skilled offensive boxer at 140, and one of the best technicians at any weight class. His movement, combination punching and hand speed were second to none, and he will be a frightening prospect for anyone to go against. We knew that already though, so I won’t go in to it in detail here. Watch the Malignaggi fight again if you need persuading.

The worrying element of the fight for Khan was that his defense seems to have somewhat regressed since the Kotelnik and Malignaggi fights. In many rounds, Khan was hit over and over by the right uppercut inside to the face, and he never really figured out how to deal with it. Later on Maidana started to land the overhand right to the chin, which Khan was caught flush by over and over. If Khan had figured out how to protect himself from these punches better this could have been a far easier win, and Amir has showed before that he is good enough to deal with this kind of problem. Maybe Khan was keen to show that he could take a big punch, but there is no credit in a fighter taking unnecessary punishment. He needs to get out of the way of big shots in the future, or he will accumulate damage that could hamper him in future fights.

Amir may move up to No. 1 in the Ring rankings after this, and in my opinion he’d deserve to, as he has now beaten better guys than either Alexander and Bradley have, albeit not by much. I also think he’d beat both those guys, and I look forward to finding out if I’m right sometime next summer after those two unify their belts in January. I think he’s still some way short of Pacquiao or Mayweather, and not quite a top 10 P4P, but for a man who turned 24 this week, he has plenty of time to live up to his talent and one day be one of the world’s very best.

With Maidana, his failure to put away a man with a supposed glass jaw will raise questions among some about whether he is a genuinely world class contender. He was completely outclassed at times, and has now lost both times he has gone in with top boxers (Kotelnik being the other). He did not call for a rematch, which suggests he knew deep down he was beaten tonight, and he was badly hurt by the bodyshot that put him down, and had the first round been ten seconds longer we could have seen a very early ending.

All of this would seem damning for his chances of being a top 140lb contender, but I think it overlooks two facts, one being that Maidana seems both impossible to stop, and two is that he can keep slugging with terrifying power even when being soundly beaten and while physically exhausted. The man has amazing heart, and could knock out pretty much anyone with the shots he threw tonight. Watching at ringside, I can’t imagine Alexander or Bradley were feeling confident they’d survive 12 rounds with Maidana, just as Khan nearly didn’t. Maidana might have flaws, but he’d still probably knock out the vast majority of the Top 10 light-welterweights, and I think he deserves to retain his number 4 ranking when the Ring revises its standing next week. Counter intuitively, after this defeat he’ll probably be a less attractive opponent now because the best guys can see just how dangerous he is. I hope that Bradley and Alexander do fight him in the next year or so, because despite his flaws, I suspect Maidana could beat them both and be the second best guy in the division, they might outbox him and he will be left to batter the rest of the contenders, but I think he deserves the chance to find out.

So, in conclusion, what have we learned that we didn’t know before? Khan is scarily good, still flawed, but that his chin is no longer the question mark it was. Maidana is seriously flawed, but he is almost good enough to steamroller his way through despite this. Peterson isn’t quite good enough to be considered among the best, and Ortiz has a long way to go even to get back to where he was 2 years ago, but might just get to the top if he sorts himself out. Paradoxically, there are a lot of unanswered questions. We still don’t really know what order the top four guys should be in, other than that Khan is above Maidana (just). Let’s look forward to 2011, and cross our fingers that we can see the rest of the matchups we need to find out who really is the best in one of the most exciting divisions in boxing.