Comments Thread For: Amir Khan Badly Hurt, Holds On To Beat Maidana

[Roja's480]

ehem...khan is golden boy.......idiota!!!

made me laugh

[SugarAnt05]

Damn good fight. I wasnt a Khan fan, but he showed some major balls against the hardest puncher in the division and never went down. This is boxing, people take shots and he tooks Maidana best punches. Kudos to Maidana too, he was taking some good shots and kept coming. I thought it was funny the way he went after Khan when he tried to touch gloves. Either way, I had Khan winning that fight 8-4. Great fight, should be fight of the year.

[P4P Opinion]

Khan was dissapointing from a mental discipline standpoint, but he showed a hell of a lot of heart and he proved a lot about his punch resistance. I think Maidana proved himself to be a better fighter than we gave him credit for beforehand, relentlessly chasing Khan down and walking through a lot of punishment himself. Great fight and possibly the fight of the year.

[bluetuazon]

Great fight, i got Khan ahead by 1-2 rds. Scoring was fine, but Cortez wasnt, he is obviously corrput, its not the first time that happened, right at the start i thought what the hell is wrong, why does he break the fighters all the time when the arms were free?

It was a clear disadvantage to Maidana the way Cortez judged that fight.

But Khan was still impressive, Maidana should have landed one more big punch in the 10th and it would ve been over but he was gassed too and totally exhausted. FOTY 2010, sadly there will be no rematch, Roach will stay far far away from Maidana, and the other 140 LBS guys as well i fear, he s too small to go up to WW, maybe a rematch with Kotelnik or the Bradley / Alexander loser.

why would roach stay away from dana?? khan just beat the dude..knocked him down once....why would khan be scared?? dude..mad props for maidana for the heart alone...but its ****** to say that team khan would stay away from the person they just beat....get real man!

[project xxx1]

great great fight by 2 warriors last night

khan deserved to win but everyone at 140 will avoid madiana,hes a ****ing beast and wont stop coming forward

[Dave Rado]

I posted this on Dec 8:

I think both fighters will surprise a lot of people, and will perform much better than many people expect them to - especially Maidana, who I think is being seriously under-estimated in some quarters. I still have Khan as the narrow favourite, but I think it will be by far his toughest fight since he teamed up with Roach, and that Maidana will hurt him a few times during the fight.

On September 26, I posted this:

It's not just one punch power [that Maidana has] though. He is a pretty good pressure fighter, if not quite an elite one. And he sometimes throws from awkward angles and his punches can be hard to anticipate. Kotelnik has an excellent defence and a granite chin, but Maidana landed plenty of clean punches on Kotelnik and most people thought Maidana deserved to get a narrow decision win in that fight.

Admittedly Kotelnik doesn't have the speed or lateral movement that Khan has, but as long as Maidana has a decent gameplan, and doesn't just head hunt, he does have a decent chance, IMO, and it will be easily Khan's toughest fight to date. Even if Khan wins, I would be very surprised if he isn't hurt at some point in the fight.

On September 11 I posted this:

I think you're completely wrong about the stamina. Maidana's stamina was fine in the last few rounds against Kotelnik. Against Corley, he clearly hadn't trained properly and was unfit. You can bet your life he'll be fully trained for the Khan fight. OTOH, although Khan dominated most of the Kotelnik fight, he looked decidedly gassed in the last two rounds, and if Kotelnik had a big punch, which he doesn't, Khan would have been in serious trouble in the last round.

Although it's true that Khan is likely to outbox Maidana for long stretches, Maidana's best chance is not to throw everything into the early rounds and risk punching himself out. He's an effective pressure fighter, and provided he's fit, his best hope is to constantly try to cut the ring off, try to bully Khan into the ropes, keep up a decent workrate - especially to the body - without punching himself out, and wait for an opening, which is bound to come his way sooner or later. Then when the opening does come, it'll be Khan's moment of truth. If Maidana uses those tactics, you can bet your life Khan will be hurt at some stage of the fight, and then we'll see whether his powers of recovery have improved under Roach's tutelage, and whether he can hold on effectively until his head has cleared. If he can, he'll win. If he can't, he'll lose.

I think all three posts were right on the button.

Maidana exposed all the people who claimed that he was a one-dimensional bum, and Khan exposed all the people who claimed that Maidana only had to land one solid punch and it would be over. It was obvious all along to anyone who has really followed both fighters' careers that both claims were ridiculous.

Props to Khan for showing world class skills in the early rounds and great heart when he was out on his feet in the 10th. Props to Maidana for showing that he is a world class pressure fighter who can cut off the ring effectively, who is far more accurate and has far better timing than most gave him credit for, and who always finds a way to land his power punches, often from very unorthodox angles.

I hope the people who underrated both fighters, especially the huge number who seriously underrated Maidana, man up and admit they were wrong.

You can see why Roach and Khan tried to postpone this showdown for as long as they possibly could though. It had nothing whatsoever to do with money, as they pretended. They just didn't think Khan was ready yet for such a dangerous fight - and they were right. Khan still needs to do a lot of work on how to react when he gets hurt. His tactics in the last three rounds were all wrong, and he took far more shots in the late rounds than he should have. And all the way through the fight, he was horribly vulnerable to the uppercut - Maidana was able to land that punch almost at will. Roach will need to do a lot of work on that.

[malan]

Khan in my opinion is a B level fighter, I see training with Manny he mimic's some of his antics now. If his opponent was a little more polished last night and could set-up his punches Khan would have gotten KO'd easily. However I would love to see him in the ring with Jab that will be a true test for him because he will get set up when he comes in with that machine gun punching approach, whereby Jab has the speed to get there first !

Khan

Jab

[Laborer]

Just because you don't have tremendous punch doesn't mean you can't become a champion, or better yet, all time great. I can name you several fighters who didn't carry too much punching power who turned out to be great, but the list would be too long.

BTW, Mayweather is not the hardest puncher either, so, does that mean he can't beat Khan either.

but floyd was never known to have a glass chin

[jetgeomcx]

what hurt him later on was turning himself into a punching bag and letting maidana work in in the early rounds, i hope he stops with that pacquiao bravado, not all men are created equal

i commented on that while watching with friends.
khan is immitating pacman, consciously or not on his part.
raising both hands and hitting both globes when hit hard.....
....and letting the other guy punch him.
..soooo pacman!!

[rayb112]

Total b#ll****...Khan got his a$$ handed to him from 6th round on...those bull crap flurries he did in the later rounds wasn't hardly enough to win the rounds...the knockdown and point taken away silled the deal for the fight but I believe even without that they would gave the victory to Khan...all I know now is that he better keep Mayweather's name out of his mouth...