By William Mackay: Trainer Freddie Roach says that he’s going to try and have Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) stay in the center of the ring on May 19th in his rematch against IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) rather than letting Khan stay on the ropes like he was doing from time to time last December to catch a breather against Peterson.

Roach told RingTV “He [Khan] did lay on the ropes at times in a passive position. He was letting Lamont go with some hard shots to the body. So I would pretty much tell him not to lay on the ropes so much and to box more in the middle of the ring.”

That sounds good in theory but in practical application it may be that Khan can’t fight that way against Peterson. When he was trying to box in the center of the ring against Peterson last time, Peterson was able to close the distance to really hammer him with hard shots. Khan had to stop punching because he was getting nailed in between his own shots and it obviously hurt. If Roach tries to keep Khan off the ropes, it means that Khan will get fewer rest breaks and will need to move a lot more than he did last time. You could see the effects of the running on Khan by the 8th round, as he started to look really tired, resulting in Khan doing a lot of pushing off on Peterson.

If Roach wanted to make some real changes to Khan’s game, he’d keep him from shoving, holding and putting Peterson in headlocks all night. Those are the things that took away from Khan’s game and the shoving led to Khan losing two points. I don’t know if the shoving was Roach’s brain child or if Khan has been doing this before he started training with Roach.