By Chris Robinson
Saturday night was a pretty special one for WBA junior welterweight champion Amir Khan, as he survived a furious effort from his Argentinean foe Marcos Maidana on his way towards capturing a unanimous decision at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Taking place in front of an estimated 4,632 spectators, there was no better seat in the house to witness the incredible fight than that of ringsid commentator Larry Merchant, a staple on HBO’s networks for over 30 years.
During his tenure as an analyst Merchant has seen countless world title fights under any and all circumstances imaginable. Asked for his thoughts on last night’s bout, Merchant choose to stray away from any kind of descriptive talk and instead still seemed to be in awe of what had just transpired.
“It’s the sort of fight that you don’t have to analyze,” Merchant stated. “All you can say is ‘I want to see both guys again and if they can stand fighting each other for another twelve rounds we’d be glad they could’”.
Heading into the fight it was unknown whether Khan would be able to weather a storm as intense as the one Maidana could potentially create. Khan was the victim of a first round knockout loss to crude Columbian Breidis Prescott over two years ago and ever since then rumors of him having a shaky chin have existed.
There certainly was danger around every corner yet Khan found a way to bring his boxing skills to light as he simply edged Maidana more often than not with his blazing speed and sharp combinations. Highlights of the fight included a left hook to the liver from Khan that scored the fight’s only knockdown and a hellacious rally from Maidana in the tenth round in which the British star was lucky to survive.
Merchant concedes that while Khan may have come away a bit scathed, he truly showed some moxie inside of the ring.
“I think he showed that he’s got what the British call ‘bottle’,” Merchant continued. “If some of those shots in the later rounds would have hit him in the first minute then maybe we would have seen him crumble. That’s what happened the first time; he just got nailed by a punch he never saw. But it was on him. He picked Maidana as his opponent in this fight because he wanted to show what he eventually showed, which is to his credit.”
The event was full of boxing personalities ringside but you would be hard pressed to find two individuals watching the action intently as Devon Alexander and Timothy Bradley, also title-holders in the 140-pound class. While the Khan-Maidana barnburner served as great fare for most in attendance, the two champions obviously had a different outlook on the developments.
“They were probably thinking that they didn’t want to get into that kind of an all-out battle,” Merchant said respectively of Alexander and Bradley. “But we all want to see spontaneous combustion inside of the ring and if they are ambitious to show who they are and that they are the kings of their world and that that they want to make a mark, then maybe they get inspired by this.”
It just so happens that Bradley and Alexander will engage in the first big fight of 2011 when they collide at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. Merchant closed out by seeming to give the WBO champion a slight edge.
“I think Bradley is regarded as the number one guy in this division and he is the favorite. The burden of proof is on Alexander to show that he should be the favorite.”
Chris Robinson is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. An archive of his work can be found here , and he can be reached at Trimond@aol.com
