By Chris Robinson - On Saturday, WBA super lightweight champion Amir Khan announced to his 181,000 Twitter followers that he has been working with his previous strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza, whom he had a slight falling out with after his December victory over Marcos Maidana at the Mandalay Bay. Khan noted that he and the Colombian will commence working this Monday at 6 in the morning in preparation for his upcoming fight in July against an yet-to-be-determined foe.
In April Khan pulled out a six-round technical nod over Ireland's Paul McCloskey in his native England, a fight in which he looked far from stellar, and many of his supporters had been hoping for a reunion with Ariza. The two seemed to work well with one another but they parted ways shortly after the Maidana fight, with Ariza claiming he hadn't gotten paid for his services and even accusing members of the Bolton fighter's camp of breaking into his hotel room in order to steal his contract.
A few weeks ago, the two sides met to begin discussions about possibly repairing their working relationship. During an interview with BoxingScene.com, Khan was very clear that he was interested in a positive solution to have Ariza return to the corner.
"My conditioning was great for the Maidana fight. Everyone knows that Alex is a great conditioning coach. I mean, look at Manny Pacquiao and myself. But there are a few things that we have to get ironed out. I think that it would be good if we could get things ironed out," said Khan.
While Ariza didn't want to open up too much about another working relationship with Khan due to legal purposes, he couldn't hide his excitement towards the proposition.
"I like his intensity," Ariza told me when asked for his favorite traits of Khan. "His openness, his willingness to try new things. Everybody is now doing things a little bit differently. The things you do sometimes can be very taxing and a lot of the guys just don't make it. But he was one of the guys who was up every day and I could tell that some of the days he just wasn't digging it, he was still doing it and putting 100% into it."
In the Maidana fight Khan started fast by scoring a first round knockdown off of a body shot yet had to hold of the surging Argentinean down the stretch of the fight. In the tenth round Khan could be seen absorbing some unearthly power shots from Maidana, yet he found a way to weather the storm and hold on for a tight unanimous decision verdict.
