Judah:I’m going to take Khan to school

By Boxing News - 07/21/2011 - Comments

By Sean McDaniel: IBF light welterweight champion Zab Judah (41-6, 28 KO’s) intends on putting on a schooling session against the supremely confident World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan (25-1, 17 KO’s) on Saturday night in their head to head fight at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The southpaw Judah, 33, wants Khan’s title and is looking to use the win over Khan to catapult upwards for a hoped for fight against either Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather Jr. Judah already lost to Mayweather in 2006, but he’s still hoping to get a second fight with him. The more realistic option is against Pacquiao, however, because his promoter Bob Arum has pretty well exhausted all of the meaningful opposition available to Pacquiao near or at his weight class.

The 5’7″ Judah would be perfect for the 5’6″ Pacquiao, but first Judah has to beat Khan to get to the next level for the mega money. Khan also has big dreams, and is eying a fight against Mayweather Jr next year. That’s all that Khan has been talking about for the last year is Mayweather, and how he deserves the fight and how he thinks he’s going to beat him. No one believes that Khan will beat Mayweather, but fans to see Khan getting at least a fight with him next year if he can get by Judah.

“One thing about it, we’re definitely going to take him to school,” Judah said to ESPN in referring to his fight on Saturday night against Khan. “I think after Saturday night, he’ll figure out that Golden Boy and his trainer, Freddie Roach, set him up as a pawn. For people that play chess, they know what that is. They set him up for a pawn and put him in a position that he shouldn’t have been in.”

To be fair, Khan’s management doesn’t have much choice in the matter. They don’t put Khan back in with devastating punchers Breidis Prescott and Marcos Maidana, they now don’t want to put him in with the hard hitting Lucas Matthysse. They see Judah, and likely think he’s past his best years and not the threat he once was. If he was, he probably would be ignored the same that Prescott, Matthysse and Maidana are. The gamble here is that if Judah has enough left of his former ability, say 80%, that still may be far too much for the flawed Khan to beat. In his prime, Judah was an arguably much more talented fighter than Khan. Judah had it all and his only problems came when he fought Kostya Tszyu and was knocked out. When Judah moved up in weight to the welterweight division, he was basically out of his element and not big enough against the larger fighters.



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