By William Mackay: Despite being knocked out recently by WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia, 25-year-old Amir Khan (26-3, 18 KO’s) is still saying he plans on retiring from boxing at 28. Khan will be turning 26 in December, which basically gives him 2 years and 4 months to fight before he turns the magical 28 and presumably has to retire.
Khan told boxingnews that he’ll be getting out of the sport when he turns 28, and he doesn’t see his loss to Garcia as a big deal. He thinks he can come back from the loss just like Lennox Lewis did when he was stopped a couple of times. It’s going to be interesting to see if Khan actually can come back from this because he was pretty badly hurt in the Garcia fight, and he may not be able to take hard shots after that defeat without getting stopped again.
I have no doubts that Khan can defeat a certain type of fighter without much problems. If you match Khan back up with most of the fighters that he’s fought since he was stopped by Breidis Prescott in 2008, Khan will likely win every time. He fought a lot of opponents that weren’t much of a threat to him like Paul McCloskey, Dimitry Salita, an over the hill Zab Judah, Oisin Fagan, a past his best Marco Antonio Barrera, and Paulie Malignaggi.
Khan can beat those kinds of fighters even with a weak chin. If Golden Boy Promotions puts Khan back on a soft diet for a couple of years, he’ll very likely win every fight until his retirement. The problem is all the good fighters that he’d like to fight have power and would have a decent chance of knocking him out. Khan also wants to try and avenge his loss to Garcia, and that’s a real risky fight for Khan.
But retiring at 28 seems a little silly at this point because it’s so young. Of course, if Khan keeps getting knocked out or beaten by decisions, he may want to push the number ahead a little sooner and retire at 26 or 27 instead. If Khan actually faces quality opposition and not fodder like in the past after his loss to Prescott, these next two years should say a lot about Khan.
I have a feeling he’s going to be well protected by Golden Boy to keep him away from dangerous punchers like before. They’re likely not going to want to see Khan face someone dangerous and get sparked out again before he becomes a pay-per-view fighter in the United States. Golden Boy was hoping to make Khan a PPV attraction and thus far, due to Khan’s consecutive losses to Lamont Peterson and Garcia, they’ve failed.
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