By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Freddie Roach wants his fighter WBA light welterweight champion (24-1, 17 KO’s) to fight one more bout at light welterweight to unify the titles against the winner of the Timothy Bradley vs. Devon Alexander bout, and then Roach wants Khan to face Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Last night at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Khan defeated World Boxing Association light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision in a victory that didn’t exactly end with a lot of momentum for Khan.
Indeed, Khan started off well but in the last three rounds, he took a terrible battering and was almost knocked out. Khan was forced to run and tie up in rounds 10 through 12 to prevent from getting knocked out.
To his credit, Khan stayed on his feet and got the decision based on the rounds he had won earlier in the fight. However, Khan took terrible punishment that left him bleeding and his nose badly swollen and perhaps broken.
After the fight, Roach had the gall to still talk about wanting Khan to face Mayweather, even though win showed that Khan is hardly in the class of Mayweather and likely not even in the class of Alexander or Bradley. Khan looked like the same fighter that had been destroyed by Breidis Prescott in 2008, as his legs were like noodles in the last three rounds and all he could do was run around, hold and benefit when referee Joe Cortez would frequently interrupt the action when Maidana was pounding Khan on the inside.
In an article at the BBC Sport Five, Roach said this after the fight: “We need another fight at 140 lbs to make sure he [Khan] looks good and stops making the mistakes he made. It could happen. If he cleans up the 140 pound division and goes to 147, Mayweather won’t fight Pacquiao but maybe he will fight Amir Khan.”
I’m sorry but this is a big joke. Khan struggled badly against Maidana and went life and death with him. This was hardly a win. If anything this was more of a draw, because it was very, very close and if Khan won, it was by a razor thin margin. It wasn’t the type of victory where he walked away and he could say that he was the better man, because Khan didn’t prove that.
If this was a math test, Khan got a C- and not the A+ that he, his trainer and his fans were hoping he would get. Khan certainly didn’t fight well enough for Roach to start crowing about Khan’s win and use that as an excuse for him to fight Mayweather. That’s a pathetic joke. Khan and Roach should do the right thing and give Maidana a rematch.
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