DUBAI – Trainer Sean O’Hagan believes his fighter, Maxi Hughes, could be a “banana skin” for unbeaten lightweight prospect Bakhdour Usmonov.

They fight on the IBA Champions Fight Night on Friday at the Duty Free Tennis Stadium and O’Hagan thinks his crafty English veteran southpaw could know a bit too much for the man from Tajikistan.

“If I had an 11-0 kid, relatively inexperienced in the professional ranks, to be honest, I’d not be risking him against Maxi Hughes,” O’Hagan told BoxingScene. “I mean, Maxi now, I think he's somewhere in the region of 40 fights as a pro, he's boxed everybody at every level. The likes of Kambosos, the likes of [Jovanni] Straffon, the likes of Kid Galahad, you know. That list goes on and on. Liam Walsh, Ryan Walsh… it’s a wealth of experience there. And if I’ve invested in somebody that I’m bringing through, I’d want to avoid Maxi Hughes like the plague. And I think what people do is they look at his record and they see that stoppage ratio to fight ratio, you know, it don’t look massive.”

Hughes has scored just six stoppages in 29 wins, against seven losses and two draws.

But O’Hagan contends Hughes punches harder than the statistics indicate.

“Then you’ve got to look at fights that should really have been called off. I would really double that KO figure that he's got on his record because it doesn't tell a true story. The likes of Straffon should have been called off. [Viktor] Kotochigov was gone, it [the fight] were waved off, [the] referee got a shout from ringside and called it back on. You know, you’ve got instances like that, there’s several more that I can think of that should have been on that record. It doesn’t tell a true story, but maybe that goes in our advantage.”

Hughes has also recently turned 36, and perhaps that’s another statistic the 11-0 (5 KOs) Usmonov has an eye on.

“Yeah, [Hughes is] a little bit long in the tooth,” O’Hagan added. “But I mean, if you look at boxing now, fighters are going on longer and longer. I suppose it’s an advantage in training, advantage in science. We know a lot more about looking after ourselves now. So, you know, maybe going back four or five years, it would have been very, very unusual. Now, not so much. But I think some people can be sucked in by that and can be fooled by that.”