By William Mackay: Former Amir Khan trainer Freddie Roach has no ill will towards Khan after being recently let go by him after Roach couldn’t give Khan the undivided attention that he was looking for from his training camps. However, Roach does want to warn Khan to stay away from big punchers, especially Roach’s #1 fighter Manny Pacquiao, as Roach believe that has problems against guys that can slug.

Roach said to Radio Raheem “I tried for a very long time to get Amir Khan to settle down, with no success…He likes to exchange a lot – and I don’t think that’s gonna change. Like I say, I wish Amir all the best – but stay away from punchers and my guy’s [Manny Pacquiao] a puncher.”

I think I have to agree with Roach on that. Khan definitely needs to stay away from fighting Pacquiao because that would be a really bad thing for him to do right about now.

The time for Khan to have fought Pacquiao would have been before Khan’s loss to Lamont Peterson last December. Going into that fight, Khan had beaten Zab Judah, Paul McCloskey, Paulie Malignaggi, Dmitriy Salita, Andriy Kotelnik and Marco Antonio Barrera in his last six fights and a lot of boxing fans were talking about him being the best fighter at 140. However, things have changed in a dramatic way since Khan fought and lost to Peterson and Danny Garcia in his last two fights. Garcia knocked Khan out and made it look easy after blasting him down in the 3rd.

Khan wants a good opponent for his next fight on December 15th so that he can get his name back up there where it was before the Peterson and Garcia losses. However, I don’t think Golden Boy Promotions are going to match him up against anyone good enough for him to get much respect from the boxing fans that have lost faith in him.

One of Roach’s frustrations is that he was unable to get Khan to stop looking to brawl with his opponents. It must have been frustrating for Roach to give Khan the game plan before his fight with Garcia last July only to see Khan seemingly ignore them by going out and slugging with Garcia instead. The end result was Khan getting knocked out in the 4th.