By Jeff Aranow: After training for a little less than two months, Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) believes that he was destined to fight at middleweight because of how hard he had been working at cutting weight in the past to get down to 147. Khan feels that it’s a good thing that he’s moving up in weight to middleweight to face WBA champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) on May 7 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
When Khan first signed for the Canelo fight, he had some misgivings initially about whether he was designed to be fighting in the middleweight division, but he’s now beginning to think that he should have made the move up to middleweight already.
“I felt really strong, too big for my weight class, and I’ve been killing myself trying to come down in weight. Maybe it turns out that Amir Khan is meant to be a middleweight,” said Khan via skysports.com. “This is a great opportunity for the world title up against a great fighter. I am ready, and I believe in myself.”
It’s quite possible that the reason why Khan has struggled in fights against Danny Garcia and Chris Algieri in the past four years is because he was killing himself to fight in weight classes that his body wasn’t meant to fight in. Khan artificially was able to stay at 140 and then 147 by draining down in weight. However, the weight cutting process left Khan weak, and susceptible to getting hurt from headshots.
Danny Garcia knocked Khan out in 2012 in a fight in the 140lb division. Khan then moved up in weight to the 147lb division at welterweight, and he’s not been knocked out since. However, even in this weight class, Khan had to drain himself to get down to the weight.
Khan would come down from 160 to make weight, and that was too much for him. Some fighters like Canelo can drain down 20 pounds without it hurting them. However, most fighters tend to be weakened from the process and it hurts their performances in fights. Even Canelo would probably be a far better fighter if he fought at the full weight for the middleweight division at 160 instead of choosing to fight at 155.
“When I got the call from Oscar [De La Hoya] asking, ‘How do you feel about fighting Canelo?’ I said, ‘With my skills, speed and power, I really believe you guys will see something different in this fight,” said Khan.
Khan has seen Canelo’s fights, noted that he’s a flat-footed fighter, and he feels confident that he’ll be able to hand the Mexican fighter his second loss of his pro career. Khan sees nothing in Canelo’s ability that worries him. Khan believes he will be able to handle Canelo’s punching power for the few shots that he will able to land. Khan is not going to give Canelo many opportunities to land his big power shots in this fight because he’s going to be boxing him for the full 12 rounds.
This is going to be a much different fight for Canelo than his fight against James Kirkland last year in ay. It will be a different fight than Canelo’s last fight against Miguel Cotto, because Khan is not going to make the mistake of trying to slug with Canelo the way that Cotto did last November. Cotto gave away several valuable rounds early on when he attempted to slug with Canelo. If Cotto had those rounds back, I am sure he would have opted to box him and win the fight, because those early rounds were crucial.
“You have two styles – speed and power and strength and explosiveness. We both have youth, and we both want to fight the best. On May 7 we will be ready for this, and guess what? I am going to win the middleweight world championship,” said Khan.
Canelo has a pure slugging style to his game. He likes to stand in the trenches and punch it out with his opponents. When he does box, he prefers to back up against the ropes and use head movement to try and make his opponents look bad. I’m not sure if that’s going to work with Khan, but it’s very likely that Canelo will try that at some point in the fight.
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