Freddie Roach believes he has another Manny Pacquiao on his hands in the shape of Britain’s Amir Khan.
Their trainer fully expects his young protege to follow the Filipino up through the weight divisions once he has unified the light-welterweight titles.
Khan defends his WBA strap against knockout specialist Marcos Maidana when he makes his Las Vegas debut on Saturday.
He began camp by sparring with Pacquiao ahead of his win over Antonio Margarito and even got the better of the six-weight southpaw and current pound-for-pound king in one of the final sessions.
And Roach believes Khan, who turned 24 on Wednesday, is even better than PacMan was at the same stage of his career.
“I think Amir has greater potential than Manny Pacquiao,” he told skysports.com.
“He has a lot of the same assets, great speed, the same worth ethic, discipline. He has all the tools to be a multi-weight world champion.
“He is getting bigger and stronger and it won’t be long before he’s a welterweight. Once we’ve cleaned up at 140lbs and unified those titles, he’ll be more than ready to move up.”
Pre-fight talk in Vegas has been dominated by the possibility of Khan facing Floyd Mayweather, with his megafight with Pacquiao moving further and further from fruition. Dangerous
Both fighter and trainer want to see that happen, after a 2011 unification bout with the winner of fellow title-holders Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander who meet in January.
And although he brings a fearsome record of 29 wins from 30, 27 by knockout, Roach says there is no way Argentinian Maidana is going to scupper Khan’s plans.
“He is dangerous but the thing is, he is not a great boxer,” he said.
“We’ll take the fight to him in the middle of the ring and if we keep him at a distance it will be an easy fight.
“Once we start backing this guy up – because he doesn’t fight well going backawards – we’ll unload the powershots and we will knock him out.
“We’re talking about breaking this guy down and then we’re going to get him. I would say round eight, nine or 10, somewhere towards the end of the fight.
“But he makes a lot of mistakes and we can take advantage of them and once he feels Amir’s power we’ll get him out of there.”
