By William Mackay: It’s no secret that World Boxing Association (WBA) light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (29-1, 27 KO’s) has one of the best right hands in the division. Indeed, Maidana appears to be the hardest puncher in the entire division, although Khan says that he punches as hard as Maidana. I would believe that if I hadn’t seen Khan fight before and if Khan wasn’t known for complimenting himself so much. Maidana has done a number on two big prospects Victor Cayo and Victor Ortiz in the past year, stopping both of them in fights that people thought Maidana would lose.

On Saturday night, Maidana is once again taking on someone that people think he’s going to lose to in 24-year-old Khan. While Khan is the current WBA light welterweight champion, he still hasn’t proven himself to be much more than a paper champion because of the careful match-making that his management has done with him. Khan picked up the WBA title by beating paper champion Andriy Kotelnik last year and then defended the title against Dmitri Salita, who had no business being ranked at #1 by the WBA given that Salita had never fought a 1st tier fighter during his career. And recently Khan fought former IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi rather than Maidana. Maligaggi was zero threat to Khan because of his lack of punching power.

In an article at the Guardian.co.uk, Maidana said “I know he [Khan] is fast, and I know he moves well. But I don’t know how long he can stay away from my right hand.”

It’s extremely doubtful that Khan can stay away from Maidana’s right hand for the full 12 rounds of the fight. Khan’s fans seem to think it’s possible, but they’re kidding themselves. There isn’t a fighter alive that can stay away from getting hit by another fighter in a 12 round fight. Even if Khan runs, Maidana will catch him. What this fight boils down to is not whether Maidana will catch Khan with his right hand, but rather will Khan be able to take getting hit really hard 5 to 10 times every round. That’s about how often Khan is going to get hit with one of Maidana’s sledgehammer shots, because Maidana is capable of throwing hard punches even in close proximity of his opponents. He doesn’t need a lot of room to land huge shots. This means that unless Khan’s weak chin can handle Maidana’s shots, we will have a new champion on Saturday. Khan will then be forced to go back to the drawing board in his trainer Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym, and they can decide together what the best move would be for British fighter. Hopefully, Khan doesn’t fire Roach or get dumped by him.