Back in May of 2016, former two-belt junior welterweight champ Amir Khan was knocked out cold by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a bid for the Mexican’s WBC middleweight title. He’s now, only recently, coming forward with an explanation for that brutal KO.
Apparently, at least according to him, Canelo’s gloves had a lot to do with it.
“I’ve always said boxing isn’t a level playing field when it comes to the gloves,” Khan told Fighthype.com in a recent video interview. “Every glove is different. When I fought Canelo, he had the Everlast horsehair gloves on. When I put my hand in, it was like pushing to the wall.
“They were solid. It was like being hit with a baseball bat. [With] The foam padding ones [gloves], the shape always stays the same. With the horsehair, it fades more towards the back of the hand. So that way, your knuckles are more visible. Without padding in the way, that’s going to put more pressure on your knuckle. So you’re going to be hit with a bare hand.”
Khan believes that the gloves Alvarez used in their fight afforded him a greater puncher’s chance in their bout—a bout in which the UK fighter was actually doing fairly well until getting cracked with a big right.
In the Fighthype video, the Olympic silver medalist would go in deeper on the glove situation in boxing.
“You’ve got Grant, you’ve got Rivals, you’ve got Everlast,” said Khan. “You’ve got all kinds of different types of gloves. Every glove is different and made in a different way. Nowadays, you can talk to the [equipment company] owner and say, ‘Listen, I want a knockout glove. Make sure the padding is more on the wrist and not on the knuckle. I can call up and say ‘I’ve got bad hands, I need more padding on the right hand,’ and he’ll say, ‘No problem.’ So imagine someone saying, ‘Look, take the padding away from the hand and put it more on the top half.’ They should have one glove. That’s why they have these brutal knockouts happening.
“Then you’ve got Canelo, who is wearing the MX gloves, and they’ve got nothing in them. I knew that he was just looking for that one big shot.”
Khan may have a point when talking about present day fighters being able to compete with tailor-made gloves, but it’s hard to attribute his KO loss against Canelo to this legal cheat.
Infamous for having a fairly brittle chin, the former world champ was competing three full divisions above his optimal weight against a prime and motivated elite-level fighter with a big punch. The man was headed for a knockout loss by destiny and by design no matter what gloves Alvarez was wearing.
But Khan does make a good point. In this day and age where everyone is worrying about performance enhancing drugs creating competitive disadvantages, people have stopped looking at more old-school playing field-tippers. More focus should be placed on not only equipment-related issues, but also the rampant strategy of weight manipulation in boxing that has fighters exploiting weight advantages with, often, brutal results.
