By Dan Ambrose: Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) has steadily been bulking up ever since his May 7 fight against WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) was finalized. Khan is clearly bigger than he’s ever been, and he looks nothing like the slim fighter that we all know since he turned pro in 2005.
With Khan putting on weight, boxing fans have noticed a slowing of Khan’s hand speed. The fans have been watching Khan shadow box and work, and some of the fans feel that Khan has lost a couple of steps due to the combination of extra weight he’s put on and his inactivity. Khan feels that this is a joke, because he believes he’s faster than ever.
Khan recently said that he thinks he’s become three-times stronger since he started bulking up. Just how Khan is able to measure his strength is unknown. But if Khan is three-times stronger now than before, then Canelo could be in deep trouble.
In the video of Khan throwing punches, his tactics seem to be wrong. First off, his arms don’t appear to be very long, and he’s not doing himself any favors by throwing a lot of short punches. Those are obviously not the kind of punches that he’ll need to throw in order to beat Canelo.
Khan needs to be throwing long jabs and single right hand shots occasionally. All of Khan’s punches need to be thrown from the outside. In watching Khan workout, he was throwing mostly shorter punches, as if he plans on fighting Canelo on the inside. This is not good.
“This is the weight I’m going into the fight,” said Khan to Fighthype. “The speed is still there, man. They’re saying the speed isn’t there. Are you crazy? The speed is there. I think I’m getting faster,” said Khan.
It might not matter if Khan has lost some hand speed, because as long as he has his foot speed, he might be alright. However, Khan will need to make sure that he throws mostly jabs. While throwing the jabs, he needs to have his head pulled back as far as he can so that there’s little chance for Canelo to counter his jab with a right hand or a hard left.
The way that Khan is throwing jabs and right hands, he’s letting his head get too close to the punching range of Canelo. That’s going to be a problem for Khan, because if he gets too close to Canelo, then he’ll get hit hard. Khan needs to realize that he’ll be fighting a much heavier fighter than himself in Canelo on May 7 in their fight on HBO PPV from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Being heavy will help Canelo put a lot of power and weight behind his shots. I don’t think Khan is going to be able to handle those hard shots too well. I’m not sure that Khan will be able to take more than a small handful of Canelo’s big punches without getting knocked out. That’s why Khan needs to be fighting carefully at all times if he wants a chance of winning the fight.
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