Trainer Freddie Roach has admitted the flaws in Amir Khan, stating that he would do better if he was not willing to exchange with his opponents.
“He’s a very good fighter. He’s got great speed. If he wouldn’t exchange so much he would beat a lot of guys easier,” said Roach to Koncrete Jungle.
“He likes to exchange, he stays in the pocket too long. When he does that he gets taken and he doesn’t have a great chin.
“The thing is, he needs to be a better boxer. A smarter boxer. I couldn’t change that and his new trainer couldn’t either.”
Roach has a point. While Khan has talent, he has to ask himself how many trainers he has now been with to try and correct his mistakes. The answer is four of them. Four! After being put down by the likes of Rachid Drilzane, who had not scored any knockouts at the time of fighting Khan, the Bolton former world champion boxer felt that it was time to alter trainers and left Oliver Harrison to be taught by Jorge Rubio. This partnership lasted all but two months after Khan was knocked out in the first round by Breidis Prescott. Next up was Freddie Roach’s turn to try and correct some fundamental mistakes. He briefly raised hope when Khan stayed up from being caught by hard hitting Marcos Maidana in the tenth round despite Roach, himself, admitting that he was on the verge of pulling him out. The end came when Danny Garcia decked him in the fourth round after attempting to nail Khan with counter right hooks that the British fighter repeatedly did not see coming. So, in came Andre Ward trainer, Virgil Hunter. Admittedly, he has instilled some calmness in Khan’s approach. The 28-3 boxer isn’t as erratic as he used to be although he showed against Julio Diaz that he can still get too overconfident and stick around too much. Diaz put him down in the fourth round but managed to escape with a controversial decision.
The defeat to Garcia told me a lot about his ring IQ perhaps more than any other fight. Garcia was swinging the right hook from the second round and Khan did not notice, nor did he try to make adjustments. Against somebody like Floyd Mayweather, a fight that is being targeted, possibly to take place in England next year, that is career suicide! Unfortunately, old habits die hard and Amir still needs to work on thinking before throwing. The fans win when they attend an Amir Khan fight as we all know that anything may happen but if he wants to preserve his longevity then he might need to regard approach over entertainment. Wladimir Klitschko did and he is now thought to be virtually unbeatable against the current crop of heavyweights but you would not be saying that ten years ago when he was being flattened by fighters such as Ross Puritty.
Can Amir Khan emulate that career path? The next eighteen months should have the answers.
