By William Mackay: WBA Super World light welterweight champion Amir Khan (24-1, 17 KO’s) won’t have to worry about facing unbeaten EBU light welterweight champion Paul McCloskey (22-0, 12 KO’s) alone on April 16th, as Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach will take a break from his training camp with Manny Pacquiao to travel to Manchester, England to be with Khan for his fight against McCloskey at the M.E.N. Arena.

Speaking with the Daily Telegraph, Khan said “Freddie is giving up training camp with Manny Pacquiao to be with me in Manchester, and I take that as a real compliment and a sign of how highly he thinks of me.”

It’s not a surprising move by Roach, because Khan is his number #2 fighter behind Pacquiao and if Khan were to get knocked out again, it might look bad that Roach wasn’t there to try and save him. However, Khan doesn’t have much to worry about in this fight. He and his handlers picked out a nice and slow beatable fighter that he can look good against. McCloskey doesn’t have much power or hand speed and he’s fought B level fighters his entire career.

This is an easy fight for Khan unless his chin has been weakened by his last fight with Marcos Maidana. You never know. When a fighter gets pounded like Khan did for 12 rounds, some times a fighter isn’t the same. Khan and his management made sure they didn’t pick a guy that could slug. They had the choice of choosing Bredis Prescott or McCloskey, and chose McCloskey. In terms of drumming up interest for Khan’s next fight, Prescott would have arguably been a much better choice because he already knocked Khan senseless in one round in 2008 in a fight that Prescott totally dominated and Khan ever chose to try and avenge that loss. A Khan-Prescott fight would be huge. Khan’sn fight against McCloskey will be huge in Ireland where McCloskey comes from but not a huge fight anywhere else.