By Dan Ambrose: World Boxing Association (WBA) light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) seems to have been somewhat surprised by the aggressiveness that challenger Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s) fought with last weekend in his close 12 round decision loss to Khan at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Maidana was looking to take Khan’s head off with every shot he threw, and wasn’t bothering with the niceties that Khan attempted, things like touching gloves before the start of rounds. Khan tried that with Maidana at least twice in the fight and both times Maidana simply ignored Khan and tried to immediately rip his head off.

Khan may have misjudged how serious Maidana was about wanting to win this fight and maybe thought he would lessen up on him as the fight progressed into the later rounds. Instead of tiring out and letting Khan escape with a relatively easy win, Maidana turned it up a notch in the 10th round and connected with a right hand that staggered Khan.

From then on, it was target practice for Maidana, as he laid into Khan with some of the biggest shots in the fight for three consecutive rounds. Almost immediately, Khan’s unmarked face turned red, his nose swelled up and began to bleed. The only thing that seemed to have any affect at slowing Maidana down was referee Joe Cortez, who for some strange reason kept pulling Maidana off of Khan when he was trying to work on the inside in the final three rounds.

I can’t see any explanation as to why Cortez kept breaking the two fighters apart, because Maidana was throwing punches and Khan was just taking them and trying to hold onto Maidana’s right arm. If anything, Cortez, if he was going to stop the inside action over and over again, he should have taken off points for Khan because he was holding, leaning and at times, turning his back on Maidana.

In Steve Bunces’s radio program, Khan said “This guy didn’t take a step back, Maidana was so strong and every shot he threw he did with venom and power, the way he was throwing them tough hard shots man was like we had some personal grief.”

Maidana wasn’t happy with the things that Khan had said before the fight, and he obviously wanted to take Khan out to make him pay for it. In the end, Maidana wasn’t able to stop Khan but he battered him enough to the point where Khan won’t soon forget this fight and probably won’t be willing to fight a rematch with him even though HBO will likely be pushing for it. This was clearly the fight of the year for 2010.