By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) may say that he’s moved on and gotten better since losing to Breidis Prescott in a 1st round knockout defeat in 2008, but Khan still looks pretty much like the same fighter that was taken out in 54 seconds by Prescott. The only thing that seems to have changed is that Khan now is being trained by Freddie Roach and is running almost continuosly nowadays and not looking to trade.

The chin looks about the same as it was in the Prescott loss. Khan was badly staggered by Marcos Maidana in his last fight in December and likely would have been knocked out had the referee let Maidana continue to pummel Khan against the ropes while Khan had a constant arm lock on one of Maidana’s arms. At the very least, Joe Cortez, the referee working the fight, should have taken points away from Khan for the constant holding onto Maidana’s arms. If not, then he should have let Maidana pound Khan with his free arm instead of giving Khan a break by separating them completely and bringing the action from the ropes to the center of the ring.

Recently, Khan’s attempt to fight the little know, slow-handed, weak-punching Paul McCloskey went up in smoke after McCloskey and his promoter decided to reject yet another low offer from Khan for a fight on April 16th in the UK. A fight against McCloskey isn’t the one that boxing fans want to see from Khan. To be sure, Irish fans would like to see their fighter McCloskey fight Khan, but probably not too many other people. If given the choice between seeing Khan face Prescott or McCloskey, my guess is the vast majority of boxing fans would prefer to see Khan face Prescott because there would be the revenge factor involved and there would be the potential that Khan could end up getting knocked out once again.