Amir Khan: A Man With No Home
Amir Khan is a man with no home. Of course I don’t mean it in the literal sense. I’m sure the Brit’s finances are more than adequate enough to provide him with sufficient housing. When I say home, I’m speaking of his place in the current landscape of boxing.
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Think about it.
Amir Khan is an extremely talented boxer, yet his positioning amongst his peers is a bit unclear. Is he worthy of his top level ranking in the welterweight division? Many agree. Is he overrated? Some would say yes. But why is there such a sharp divide regarding him? I think the divide can be somewhat contributed to 2 reasons.
Entertain my opinions for a second.
Early Career Misfortunes
To be precise, when I say misfortunes I am speaking of the Breidis Prescott fight.
To summarize, Khan was caught cold very early in the fight and was never able to recover. The interesting point regarding this fight is that this is the fight where the narrative of Khan not being able to take a punch presumably grew from.
Combine that him with being knocked out by Danny Garcia in 4 and the word on Amir Khan is that he has a glass chin. Never mind him going life and death and surviving one the biggest punchers in boxing by the name or Marcos Maidana, or roughing up the ultra durable Luis Collazo in a one sided thrashing.
Boxing is funny in that sense.
If a narrative involves a high profile enough fighter and the story is intriguing enough, over time it becomes an accepted truth.
Moreover, this labeling of Khan still follows him to this day and has negative effects him. You can be assured than if Khan is rocked in any fights for the rest of his career, that narrative will be alive and well.
Furthermore, I think the “weak chin” claims can be more accurately described as defensive lapses.
The Holding Out
In my opinion I feel that holding out by Amir Khan has by far been the most detrimental thing to his career at this point. Moreover, holding out for fights has affected him in 2 different ways.
First and foremost, not being active can only be detrimental to a fighter’s career. By sitting on the shelf you’re not doing your self any favors nor are you doing your fans and potential fans any either.
The window of fighter’s career is short. Sometimes VERY short. It wasn’t simply Khan holding out. It was the manner in which he went about it; by passing up a fight that most had him winning impressively versus Devon Alexander. (Holding out for fight against Floyd Mayweather is NEVER a good idea. EVER.)
Even though he did end up shutting out Alexander, the damage had already been done. Not to mention he actually bought into the Mayweather “Pick my next opponent poll.” Ironically, some reports had Khan truly winning the contest.
But lets stop for a second; When has Mayweather ever done anything other than what we wanted? For Khan to believe that we would land a fight with best boxer in the sport based on a poll was extremely foolish.
It also did not help that when Chris Algieri was announced to fight Pacquiao Khan would go on to criticize Pacquiao taking the fight, stating that he did not feel Algieri was a good enough fighter. Fast forward a few months later and Khan is fighting Algieri and giving reasons why he is a worthy opponent.
At this point in Khan’s career it seems the best thing for him to is keep fighting and winning impressively, which he has done in his past couple fights. If he keeps doing that there will be no question of where his home is; near the top of the division with the rest of the star welter-weights.
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