Khan: My sparring with Pacquiao will help me against Judah

By Boxing News - 07/20/2011 - Comments

By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (25-1, 17 KO’s) is pointing to his previous sparring with southpaw Manny Pacquiao as something that will help him beat southpaw IBF light welterweight champion Zab Judah (41-6, 28 KO’s) on Saturday night in their unification bout in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Khan things the experience from that fight will be enough for him to come out on top. But the differences between sparring and the real thing without head gear and 16 ounce gloves could be a bit of a shock for Khan.

“I’ve been sparring with Manny for three years,” Khan said in an article at sportinglife.com. “He [Pacquiao] has speed, power, great movement and is a southpaw. Sparring him will help me in this fight.”

It may help Khan or it may be completely irrelevant to what he’s facing in the ring in the form of the much more experienced Judah. I saw some of the sparring between Khan and Pacquiao, and it looked to me like Pacquiao was taking it easy on Khan, not actively trying to blast out of the water like a sitting duck. I heard in some of the other sparring Khan did with Pacquiao, it was done after Pacquiao already been through a cycle of other sparring partners for six or eight rounds, and Pacquiao had to spar Khan and then someone immediately after that. Yeah, I guess you could say that Khan technically sparred with Pacquiao but it’s not like he was facing a fresh Pacquiao and one that was looking to drill him into the canvas.

Judah has more knockouts on his record than Khan has fights, and Judah’s experience against top rung fighters like Floyd Mayweather Jr., Miguel Cotto and Kostya Tszyu gives him an overwhelming edge in experience compared to Khan, who’s best opposition has been Marcos Maidana, Andriy Kotelnik, Breidis Prescott and Paulie Malignaggi. Not even close to being as good as Judah’s.



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