By Sean McDaniel: If you thought that WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) might be in trouble without his strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza, who Khan recently dismissed, think again. Khan isn’t worried in the least about being without Ariza for his upcoming bout against EBU light welterweight champion Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) on April 16th at the M.E.N Arena, in Manchester, England. Khan feels confident that he’ll win that fight and his trainer Freddie Roach will have someone good taking Ariza’s place for the conditioning exercises.
Khan said this about the training at theboltonnews.co.uk: “I spoke to Freddie and he’s got another guy there, another guy who’s very good and knows exactly what to do. One thing you need to remember is that Freddie tells his conditioning coaches what to do, what to work on; he’s got everything sorted out.”
The truth is Khan can beat a fighter like McCloskey no matter who is strength and conditioning coach is. This fight doesn’t figure to go very long, because McCloskey fights with his guard down, eludes very few punches thrown at him, doesn’t have much power and has slow hand speed. Khan has picked the perfect fighter to look good against without having to worry about getting knocked out. The WBA, like in the case of when they positioned the inexperienced Dimitri Salita at number #1, has ranked the equally inexperienced McCloskey at #5. He doesn’t look like a number #5 ranked fighter, however. He looks more like a bottom 15 to bottom 20 fighter. Khan will likely stop McCloskey in the first three rounds of this fight, so conditioning probably won’t be an issue here.
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