Khan: Roach can help Nathan Cleverly improve

By Boxing News - 08/23/2013 - Comments

cleverly666By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan thinks former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (26-1, 12 KO’s) could come back from his 4th round knockout loss without any problems if he would simply move his training operations over to the United States and start being trained by Freddie Roach at the Wildcard Gym in Los Angeles, California.

Khan really believes that Roach can turn things around for the struggling fighter. How precisely Roach would be able to fix Cleverly’s lack of power, defense and hand speed is the big question. By the time a fighter is 26, he’s usually about as powerful as he’ll ever be.

I don’t know that Roach is going to be able to make any inroads in that area, and he’s not going to be able to do much in terms of Cleverly’s lack of defensive skills and hand speed. Those are things that would seem to be resistant to any training methods Roach could come up with.

Khan said to the BBC Sport “Freddie’s a great trainer, very good and knows what he’s talking about. He knows how to build a fighter and how to put that confidence back in the fighter…I think it’ll be amazing for him [Cleverly] if he goes to America. It will be a big change for him in his career, but I believe it will make a big difference and he’ll come back a different fighter.”

Cleverly can come to America, but I don’t see anything happening. Cleverly fights too much in an upright manner, like I said, he’s not going to be able to find any power or defense to help turn things around.

Khan went on to talk about how he turned his career around after his 1st round knockout loss to Breidis Prescott. What Khan isn’t saying is that his win over Marcos Maidana was controversial due to the referee getting in the way of Maidana when he was trying to finish Khan off in the 10th after badly hurting him.

Khan doesn’t say that he never fought Lucas Matthysse, and that was beaten by Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia. Khan didn’t say that he dumped Roach after getting blasted out by Danny Garcia.

I think Cleverly is what he is. You can take him out of the UK if you want and place him in the U.S, but he’ll just be the same Cleverly that he was before. The only thing that would be different is that he would be fighting in the U.S.

What Cleverly needs to do is pull an Enzo Maccarinelli and move down in weight. In this case, Cleverly needs to move down to super middleweight and try to fight with a weight advantage over lighter guys in this weight class.



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