Khan is trying to fight like Manny Pacquiao!

[El Chicano]

LOL, he trying to mimic Manny, even in the sound effects.

[Foodie One]

Is Khan winning?

[Grand Champ]

Yeah, the british commentaries are all over his ****.. Never heard anything like this.

[El Chicano]

Kotelnik is a wimp, he couldn't even KO Khan.

[El Chicano]

Last September Amir Khan appeared to be heading for boxing Palookaville at only 21 after an awful night in Manchester. Fifty-four seconds on the wrong end of Breidis Prescott's fists saw Khan on the canvas and fight writers penning the obituaries of the career that had sparked with silver at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

But Khan has fought back from that first-round humiliation. First he knocked out the Irishman Oisin ***an inside two rounds last December, before stopping the former multi-weight world champion Marco Antonio Barrera in March, and he woke tomorrow morning contemplating his first tilt at becoming a world champion. He hopes tomorrow evening to relieve Andreas Kotelnik of his WBA light-welterweight belt.

The pivotal moment in Khan's renaissance came when Freddie Roach, the American whose previous clients include Mike Tyson and Oscar De La Hoya, agreed to train him. Khan bases himself at Roach's LA WildCard gym where he has spent the past 10 months sparring with Manny Pacquiao, the pound-for-pound champion, and earning eulogies from Roach that he can be his next "superstar".

Khan was naive against Prescott, unable to keep his suspect chin from trouble while picking the Colombian off at range. Now, the line is that he has soaked up Roach's wisdom, learning how to temper his previous punch-and-hope style.

"Freddie's got the experience and I trust that with everything," Khan says. "I've modified it [his style] by throwing shots from your chin going straight, instead of from your waist. Moving the head, not being too static, not being wild. If you start throwing eight or nine shots you're going to get caught, ****, and the fight could be over."

"Look at Manny. I go to the gym an hour early to see him train, pick a few things up. He does different things on the pads, the way he keeps his hands up, how he doesn't move and his hands are still up. So I copied him."

Khan has defined Kotelnik as the weakest man in possession of a world title. It is hoped this view does not prove hubristic. Yet with enthusiasm, more than arrogance, Khan is insistent on speaking of the greatness he is reaching for beyond the Ukrainian.

"This is my stepping stone, yeah. I want to thank Kotelnik for letting me have a shot at the title. I'm so confident I'm going to beat him. He thinks that me moving up a weight, I won't be as strong but I'm very strong, I'm a hard-hitting fighter," Khan says of what will be only a second outing above lightweight.

"My ambition from day one in this sport has been to become a world superstar. Freddie has told people I am his next big thing – he must have seen something inside of me to achieve that. He's the type of man that wouldn't say something like that to keep me happy but because he means it."

But Kotelnik is no mere walk-on in Khan's great narrative. Although the 31-year-old has lost twice in 34 outings, the statistic that will be exercising Roach and Khan is that Kotelnik has never been stopped: stamina in the closing rounds may define the fight.If Khan does win then the dreams of box-office nights under the lights of Las Vegas and Madison Square Garden will begin to firm up. "We had a chat about the fighters Freddie's trained," a wide-eyed Khan says. "He's trained all the best from Hopkins to De La Hoya to Mike Tyson, so there are some mad stories."
In Khan's gym in Bolton there are portraits of Naseem Hamed, Lennox Lewis and Tyson on the walls. Khan yearns to join them in boxing's book of stardust champions. "Definitely man. I want people talking about me as a great fighter – from being a prospect with the big pressure as soon as I turned professional, then going on to win the world title. The Prescott fight made me change from a boy to a man."

Tonight he, and we, should find out where Khan stands.

[Sparked_1985]

There are worse people to copy than the best boxer on the planet.

[xcaret]

freddie roach is a overrated trainer

[Doctor_Tenma]

Let me get this straight, so because Amir Khan has a weak chin, he'll never trade? Is that what you would call, "Fixing the problem", Terry Norris and Thomas Hearns traded, Roach ain't fix ****. All he did was make Amir Khan more boring.

[El Chicano]

Let me get this straight, so because Amir Khan has a weak chin, he'll never trade? Is that what you would call, "Fixing the problem", Terry Norris and Thomas Hearns traded, Roach ain't fix ****. All he did was make Amir Khan more boring.

That's Amir's only hope: Throw fast flurries, hands to his chin then run. I can't wait for him to get laid out again. He looks funny when he gets KO'd, very entertaining.

[Doctor_Tenma]

That's Amir's only hope: Throw fast flurries, hands to his chin then run. I can't wait for him to get laid out again. He looks funny when he gets KO'd, very entertaining.

He will, as soon as Juan Diaz, JMM, Nate, Bradley get a crack at him, if ever.