Barrera-Khan: Amir Will Need A Good Chin To Win This Fight

By Boxing News - 01/19/2009 - Comments

khan755537By Jason Kim: I really think Amir Khan is a great fighter and has loads of potential in boxing. But I question whether he has the chin to get the job done against former six-time champion Marco Antonio Barrera on March 14th at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, Lancashire. There’s a big difference from being a challenger/prospect than being a former champion and someone that has proven himself again and again against the best fighters in the sport.

Whereas Khan has been carefully brought along against mainly mediocre fighters and yet has still lost and been knocked around in a couple of other fights, Barrera has been one of the best fighters in boxing for the past 13 years. If you look at this accurately, there’s no comparison between Khan and Barrera, because Marco is a legitimate star while Khan is someone still trying to find his way.

Khan may or may not ever make it, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t put money on him ever holding a title for long. I think he’s capable of winning one, possibly, if he can find flawed champion, but it’s questionable he’ll be able to find someone flawed enough for Khan to beat.

As for Barrera, there’s no question that he’s not the same fighter he once was. He looks much too small for the lightweight division and doesn’t appear to have the frame or power to be successful at this wait. Obviously, he’s made this move because he can no longer comfortably fight at the featherweight and super featherweight divisions due to his natural aging and putting on weight.

At lightweight, he looks badly out of place like someone wearing tennis shoes to a formal meeting. He’s lost a lot of his hand speed in recent years and is now someone that needs to wear his opponents out in the trenches rather than at long distance.

But Barrera he might not need his old skills to beat Khan. Amir is a fighter with a textbook case of a glass chin, and it ultimately it might not take more than a few well placed hooks to put Khan away. So, yeah, Khan may be the larger guy and a lot faster and more powerful than Barrera, but unless Amir can take a certain amount of punishment that comes with beating a fighter as good as Barrera, then I see him losing to him.

Having a good chin is a prerequisite to beating a top fighter like Barrera, even if he’s somewhat faded at 35. The speed is gone but his power still remains. If Khan can’t take the heat of getting hit at least hundred times to the head from Barrera, then I can Amir losing much in the same way he was beaten by Breidis Prescott, a fight which resulted in Khan being taken out in the 1st round by the hard-punching Columbian. Khan hasn’t exactly redeemed himself since then, only fighting once to defeat Oisin Fagan, who was never a threat to Khan to begin with.



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