It takes a certain mental strength to recover from a first round defeat, to rebuild your career after a humbling trip to the canvas.
So advice from someone who has been through it before could prove invaluable.
Luckily for Amir Khan he now has such a person in his team.
Former two-weight world champion Michael Moorer has joined Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Gym as an assistant and has been aiding Khan’s preparations for the Barrera fight.
“Michael Moorer has been a great asset for us,” Roach told skysports.com.
“I didn’t have Michael for Amir’s first comeback fight. I’ve used both him and Manny to spar Amir for confidence.”
Like Khan, Moorer was a technically gifted and explosive fighter with question marks about his punch resistance. He won world titles at light heavyweight and heavyweight but also suffered the type of defeats that would have provoked others to hang up their gloves.
Few can forget his knock out loss at the hands of a 45-year-old George Foreman or his Breidis Prescott-like humiliation against David Tua in just 30 seconds back in 2002.
He continued fighting until early last year before deciding it was time to contact his former mentor, now regarded as the best trainer in the business.
“Michael’s a pretty good teacher,” explained Roach.
“He told me he was going to come down one day. So I said ‘why don’t you come and help me Michael?’. He’s a really, really different person now he’s a trainer, he wasn’t always a nice person as a fighter.”
To Roach’s surprise he’s recently been contacted by another former heavyweight champion who wasn’t always a nice person as fighter either.
None other then Mike Tyson called the trainer to see if there was a role for him at the gym that is also home to current pound-for-pound king, Manny Pacquiao.
“Unfortunately Mike isn’t doing too well at the moment,” said Roach. “I just got a call that he wants a job. Mike came to Manny’s last training day for the(Oscar) De La Hoya fight.”
But sadly for Tyson – and probably luckily for Khan – he won’t be sparring the Bolton lightweight anytime soon.
While Moorer seems to have changed for the better, Roach believes the self-proclaimed baddest man on the planet may be lacking the temperament to guide young fighters.
“Mike’s a good guy, he respects me a lot,” he said. “I just don’t think he has the patience to be a trainer.”
