By William Mackay: Trainer Freddie Roach questions whether Amir Khan’s new trainer will be able to calm him down and keep him from getting in dangerous exchanges with his opponents. Roach feels that Khan might resist fighting in a more cautious manner and will continue to slug it out with his opponents when he gets hit.

Roach said to RingTV.com “If they can calm him down and get him not to exchange so much and get him to box a little bit more, being a great athlete, he’ll do much better. But I don’t know if anyone can change that though.”

Roach may be right. Khan just seems to love to punch it out with his opponents, even when he’s been hurt he still continues to slug. This is something that has helped win him a lot of fans and bring him success in the past. However, Khan is now finding the limitations of his slugging style of fighting, as he’s been knocked out by Breidis Prescott and Danny Garcia, and was almost knocked out by Marcos Maidana.

Khan’s new trainer who could be Virgil Hunter will have a lot of work on his hands to try and keep Khan from slugging with his opponents. The problem here is if Khan doesn’t believe that his chin is weak, he’ll likely continue to try and mix it up with whoever he faces.

In his last fight, Khan was clearly told by Roach to box Garcia early on to keep out of the way of his big left hooks. Khan started off following Roach’s instructions but then veered off course in the 3rd round when he started teeing off on Garcia and the crowd started cheering him on. This was all that Garcia needed to take advantage of the situation to land one of his big left hooks right on the vulnerable neck of Khan, sending him down on the canvas. If Khan had fought carefully instead of slugging with Garcia in the 3rd, he might have won the fight. But Khan just seemed to get energized by the crowd and got a little too confident for his own good and ended up paying for it.

Hunter will have to have Khan following his advice carefully if he’s going to be able to turn Khan’s career around. Roach obviously has his doubts whether that’s possible given Khan’s past performances in the ring. Khan would have to be very defensive from here on out to be able to comeback from his last two defeats to find success once again on a big scale. It’s almost impossible for a fighter to avoid getting hit with at least one big shots in every round even when a fighter has excellent defensive skills. Khan might have to back peddle constantly in order to avoid running into something big. Is that possible? I don’t think it is. Khan can’t run for 12 rounds, and his ego is too big to even try. Sooner or late, he’ll look to mix it up and find himself plastered on the canvas.