By William Mackay: If Amir Khan doesn’t dump trainer Freddie Roach in the coming weeks, Khan’s career could possibly still be saved by the world famous trainer if Roach can somehow teach Khan how to fight guys in close so that he’s not so vulnerable all the time.

Khan was badly exposed by Marcos Maidana and Lamont Peterson in his fights with them, as they were able to really batter Khan in close. Khan was useless on the inside and could only shove and hold. With the referees not breaking up the action quick enough when those fighters got inside, Khan took a lot of punishment. He did beat Maidana, but there’s still a lot of debate whether Khan would have had the referee working that fight Joe Cortez not been breaking the action when Khan was staggered and ready to go in the 10th.

Khan won’t be able to win fights just by running around and stay on the outside for 12 rounds in every fight. That takes too much out of him, and he doesn’t have the conditioning to fight that way. Khan also is a lot more vulnerable when he’s on the outside to getting hit with some major shots from his opponents. If he could learn to fight more on the inside, those shots won’t be quite as powerful.

What Khan has going against him in terms of learning how to fight inside is that Roach isn’t known for teaching fighters how to fight in close. He’s more of a trainer that is good at teaching fighters to hit and run rather than fight in close. Khan also is fairly old for a fighter trying to learn to fight in close. At 25, I don’t know if Khan would be able to grasp all the things he’d need to learn to be successful as inside fighter.