Khan says his power has tripled

By Boxing News - 03/15/2016 - Comments

1-CaneloKhanNYPC_Hoganphotos8By Dan Ambrose: In what could be a bad sign for WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, his opponent Amir “King” Khan is saying that he feels that his power is almost at triple strength of what it normally is because he’s eating more, not having to cut weight and he’s building his power through exercises.

Canelo and Khan will be facing each other in less than two months at a catch-weight of 155lbs on May 7 on HBO pay-per-view. The fight will take place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

One of the things that boxing experts feel is going against Khan in this fight is his lack of punching power. Khan has never been a big puncher since moving up to the 147lb division, and now he’s going to be moving up in weight eight pounds to fight Canelo Golden Boy’s red rooster at a catch-weight of 155 pounds on 5/7.

Unless Khan can build up his strength somehow, Canelo will be able to use his size and weight advantage to walk him down and blast him out quickly on fight night. Khan insists that his strength has increased three-fold with him not dieting, dehydrating to make weight, and his strength-building exercises. If this turns out to be true, then Canelo could be in for a lot more than he bargained for in choosing Khan as his next opponent rather than a slower and weaker fighter.

“My power is triple almost,” says Khan to Fighthype. “I’m going to be happy making the weight, whereas before I was dehydrating myself, especially very close to the fight. At the same time, I was cutting out foo and meals. This time, I can eat well, and by eating well, I can train harder and build up my strength. I can push myself even harder as well,” said Khan.

Khan at triple strength sounds pretty scary. He had power that would sting his opponents in the welterweight division, but never the power that he had when he started his career out as a lightweight. Khan’s power didn’t carry up with him when he moved up to the 140 and then 147lb divisions. But if Khan is now throwing shots with triple the strength, then this could be a really bad situation for the 25-year-old Canelo.

The Golden Boy fighter is already going to have to deal with Khan’s superior hand speed. That’s going to be a problem enough for Canelo, but if he has to deal with Khan at triple strength, we could be seeing an upset in the making on 5/7. Canelo had major problems with the hand speed of Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their fight in 2013. Mayweather was able to nail Canelo with shots all night long, and then gets out of the way before he was able to fire back with his own punches.

One of the reasons why Mayweather was so successful in the fight was the fact that he was only throwing single shots rather than combinations. This prevented Canelo from having a target to land his counter left hook that he likes to throw. Another thing that Mayweather did that prevented Canelo from landing punches is his use of his jab.

Mayweather threw mostly jabs in the fight, and he always had his head tilted backwards when he was throwing the jabs. This prevented Canelo from being able to connect with something over the top of Mayweather’s jab.

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“I’m looking forward to seeing how I’m going to be feeling in the fight,” said Khan. “I’m already seeing in how I’m sparring and how strong I feel when I spar these guys. I’m pushing guys back that I normally didn’t push back or normally didn’t hurt. But now I’m hurting people that I never used to hurt before. I know the powers there and the strengths there, and I’m holding that muscle. That’s the main thing,” said Khan to Fighthype.com.

Khan says he’s hurting his middleweight sparring partners. That shows you that he’s definitely getting stronger, because Khan hasn’t been known to beat up on his sparring partners to the point where he’s hurting them. If Khan is able to hurt his 160lb sparring partners, then he should be able to do the same thing with Canelo, no matter what weight that he comes into the fight at.

We don’t know whether Khan’s stamina will hold up with the weight increase he’s added to his frame. Khan is talking about fighting at 165 possibly. He’s never fought at that high of a weight, and he might have a problem being able to fight hard in the later rounds of the fight if he’s still at that point. Carrying around extra weight means that Khan’s heart will need to work harder to move that extra weight. Canelo is used to fighting in the 170s. It’s not going to be a problem for him. But for Khan, he’ll need to be able to carry the extra weight without gassing out.



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