BOXING: Schoolboy logic dictates that Amir Khan should win his Las Vegas debut against Marcos Maidana comfortably.
After all, last year Khan beat Andreas Kotelnik to claim the WBA light-welterweight title, earning a unanimous points decision, with one judge giving the Briton every round. One fight earlier, Kotelnik took a tight points decision against Maidana in Germany.
So if Khan beat Kotelnik and Kotelnik beat Maidana, then Khan wins on Saturday, right? The answer might be yes, though the train of thought is probably wrong.
While the Bolton fighter goes in as champion and favourite, victory is no formality and Maidana provides his biggest test since his crushing defeat to Breidis Prescott in September 2008.
Despite all of Khan’s success since switching from Cuban trainer Jorge Rubio to Freddie Roach, that dark night at Manchester’s MEN against the then unknown Prescott is still what many boxing fans remember when they think of Khan.
Not his bloody victory over Mexican great Marco Antonio Barrera – a night that put him back on the road to redemption.
Not his flawless display against Kotelnik which made him a world champion.
His one-round destruction of Dmitry Salita, brilliant though it was, fails to stick in the memory, while praise for his humbling of Paulie Malignaggi had to be tempered by the fact that he was fighting a man with only five KOs in 27 wins.
Khan’s detractors claim, with some justification, that all of his opponents since the Prescott fight have been tailor-made for him.
Certainly Salita and Malignaggi both possessed little punching power, while the sluggish Kotelnik was easy to evade for a man of Khan’s speed.
Barrera could have offered a very real threat to Khan’s chin, but the Mexican was severely hampered following an accidental clash of heads in the opening exchanges that caused his head to gush blood, thus impairing his vision.
Khan should expect to work like never before against Maidana. The Argentinian has a formidable knockout percentage of 90. Khan himself is no slouch with 70 per cent, but unlike against Salita and Malignaggi he will not have the luxury of swinging knowing that whatever comes back is unlikely to do him much harm.
Maidana has already boasted that, much like Prescott, he does not have a plan B for when he takes on Khan. He doesn’t feel he needs one, saying that he can floor the Briton with one punch.
Fighting words, indeed, though Maidana is no stranger to the canvas himself, having visited it twice against Victor Ortiz last year before bouncing back to claim a sixth-round stoppage.
Still, Maidana should recognise that this is not the same Khan who used to come out all guns blazing regardless of who he was fighting.
Roach, as well as sparring with pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao, has made him vastly more streetwise.
The lightning-quick Pacquiao aside, Khan can surely lay claim to having the fastest hands in boxing and will be hoping to get his shots in and get out before being clobbered by one of Maidana’s bombs.
Khan also has considerable punching power himself and Maidana might want to reassess his claim that he will be the only puncher in the ring on Saturday night. The state of Malignaggi’s face bore testament to the power and accuracy of Khan’s fists at the end of their fight in New York last May.
I’m leaning towards a late stoppage for Khan or Khan to win on points. But whatever the result, Khan-Maidana, along with Carl Froch’s brilliant win over Arthur Abraham last Saturday, should go some way to removing the bitter taste still lingering in many boxing fans’ mouths following the non-event that David Haye and Audley Harrison served up last month.
