Amir Khan training with Hunter

By Boxing News - 01/08/2016 - Comments

khan5555(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC, #2 WBA, #3 WBO, #4 IBF welterweight contender Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) is in Oakland, California training with his trainer Virgil Hunter to stay sharp for his next fight, which could be against IBF welterweight champion Kell “Special K” Brook (35-0, 24 KOs) on June 4 at Wembley Stadium in London, UK.

Khan, 29, recently exhausted his final shot at getting a big money fight against superstar Manny Pacquiao after he selected instead to fight WBO 147lb champion Timothy Bradley. Since Khan isn’t too eager to fight some of the lesser fighters nowadays, it’s quite likely that he’ll wind up facing Brook next.

It’s been eight months since Khan last fought. He defeated Chris Algieri in a fight that could have gone either way. It was surprising how truly awful Khan looked in that fight. It wasn’t as if Khan had been inactive for a long time before taking that fight. He just looked like he had totally regressed from the things that he had learned before. Khan looked like the same fighter that had wilted under the pressure put on him in his fight against Lamont Peterson in 2011. The only difference was Khan didn’t resort to putting Algieri in head-locks and shoving him all night long like he had with Peterson. Khan won the Algieri fight by the scores of 115-113, 117-111 and 117-111. The only decent score of that bunch was the 115-113 score, and it could have gone the other way for Algieri, because many of the rounds were tossup rounds.

Khan needs a big fight right now because he has been spinning his gears during the last three years of his career in facing weaker contenders but not taking on the tough opponents on the welterweight division. It has been wasted time for Khan. It would have been smarter for him to take some tune-up fights in 2013 rather than using up 2014 and 2015 fighting tune-up opposition as well. Khan did a long reset on his career, and that was unnecessary to say the least because he doesn’t look like he’s improved at all, and he doesn’t appear to be more confident.

Fighters only need to do a long reset if their confidence is shot, or if they have many things to fix in their game that require more than one year to fix. With Khan, he did not have that many things to fix in his game. He could have been fighting for a world title by 2014 instead of using up time in his career facing weaker contenders.

Khan needs to take the Brook fight right now before he loses his IBF belt. Unbeaten Errol Spence Jr. is moving quickly with his career and is only one fight from becoming the IBF mandatory 147lb challenger. Once that happens, Brook will be in a situation where he’ll probably not be able to put off the fight beyond 2017. I mean, I think Brook will be able to avoid Spence for the remainder of 2016, but once 2017 hits, the International Boxing Federation will likely order Brook to face Spence or else they will strip him of his IBF title. That’s why it’s very important that Khan get the fight against Brook while he still has the IBF strap and is unbeaten, because once he faces Spence Jr., many boxing fans see him losing to the talented 2012 U.S. Olympian.

Khan needs to work on his defense a little more before taking the Brook fight, and he needs to focus on his movement. Brook hits harder than the fighters that Khan has been facing since his knockout loss to Danny Garcia in 2012. If Brook can corner Khan, he will look to take him out with some big shots. I would rate Garcia as a more dangerous fighter than Brook though. You cannot blame Khan for losing to a talent like Garcia. Brook does not have a great left hook like Garcia, so Khan should be okay if he can take away Brook’s right hand and jab, which are his only weapons. Khan can beat Brook if he doesn’t get dropped or knocked out. Brook is pretty limited. I can see him grabbing Khan in clinches 24/7 if things start going badly for him like they were in his fight against Shawn Porter in 2014. I thought Brook should have been disqualified for all that gawd awful clinching he did in that fight.



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