By Terry Arthur: Since winning a silver medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and turning pro in 2005 he has been another British hopeful. Over-hyped and much commented on (through no fault of his own ) but since his knockout loss to Breidis Prescott, many have written the fellow of on account of one loss.
So to put some perspective on the Amir Khan story, let’s start by talking about the guy’s attributes.
He is a supremely fit athlete, as shown in his last fight, when surviving after taking some heavy punches with three rounds remaining. You cannot do that if you are not in excellent shape. Can now take a punch, due to the excellent conditioning gained since joining forces with trainer Roach, despite what some would have you believe. Has extremely fast hands and good footwork , combined with good punch combinations, including solid body punching. For most of his last fight he was dominating from the outside throwing excellent combinations and frustrating his opponent. In the first round he hit Maidana with a devastating body blow, which, if not for the bell, would’ve stopped Maidana. People talk of Khan surviving the last three rounds, but Maidana was very lucky that the punch came late in the round.
Now for the negatives, which are few, but serious. He doesn’t seem to be able to get out of the habit of staying on his toes when throwing a punch, thus losing power. As we all know the real power comes from the legs, and if your feet are not firmly planted when throwing a punch, you lose some power, no matter how fast your hands are. Also more worrying that that, despite getting through an incredibly tough last three rounds against Maidana, he loses his head when backed up and/or hit hard. He doesn’t seem to have the instinct to get out of those situations easily. Lastly his defence is poor. Against Maidana I lost count on the amount of times he was caught with the uppercut on the inside, and as said before, lost composure when under the cosh.
To sum up. Khan is a very good boxer with some serious flaws. But he is young and has time, if possible, to put some of these flaws right. If he doesn’t improve on these weak spots he will still beat most of the opposition he will face, because he is that good even with the flaws. He just won’t, in my opinion, be able to beat the elite in the sport of boxing I.E Floyd Mayweather and maybe a couple of fighters just below Mayweather because he is in a league of his own. Maybe he will improve these flaws or even eradicate them from his game and go on to be a multi weight world champ. Until then will the ill informed idiocy just cease for a while? I doubt it.
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