By William Mackay: Trainer Freddie Roach is under the impression that Amir Khan’s 1st round knockout loss two years ago to Breidis Prescott was nothing more than a fluke thing, something that just happened. Roach sees it something that won’t be repeated for Khan’s next fight against WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (29-1, 27 KO’s) in their fight on December 11th, at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Roach might be seeing such a rosy outlook for Khan because he does train him and he is hoping that Khan will be his next mega star after his number #1 fighter Manny Pacquiao hangs up the gloves in the not too distant future. Roach really needs Khan to succeed because Roach’s other top fighters Vanes Martiroysyan and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. might not ever pane out beyond the paper champion stage someday.

In an article at Ringtv.com, Roach said “You get knocked out once in your life and they say you have no chin. If Khan gets knocked out, they’ll say they were right. If he doesn’t, they won’t. I say it was just something that happened. I’m not worried about that. People get knocked out in boxing. Amir got knocked out so he’s stuck with that for awhile. When he wins this fight and proves that he’s one of the biggest punchers at 140 pounds that we’ve seen in a long time, it will start to go away.”

But then again, maybe it won’t. What Roach seems to be missing is that Khan has been knocked down prior to his knockout loss to Prescott, and he was staggered by the smallish Marco Antonio Barrera after the Prescott loss. Khan has been matched against punchers since the Prescott loss, and of course he’s done well because none of these fighters had any pop. We don’t know what would have happened in the Barrera fight because Barrera received a terrible cut almost immediately and he had to fight with blood pouring down his face until the 5th.

It’s going to be a sad day for Roach when/if Khan gets knocked out by Maidana. He’s obviously hoping that Khan will be his next gravy train and if Maidan ruins it by knocking him out, Roach can pretty much forget his hopes and dreams of making a star out of Khan. What Roach will have is a flashy fighter that does good against weak punchers but gets knocked out by guys with good power. Even Roach can’t fix those kinds of fighters.