Amir Khan Marches On

amir khan18.02.07 – By Bob Webb: Lightweight, Amir Khan, the pride of Bolton, Lancashire, and Olympic silver medallist 2004, continued his apprenticeship last night at Wembley Arena on the Harrison Sprott undercard with an ultra-impressive TKO in 55 seconds of the first round. His opponent was 30 year old Frenchman, Mohammed Medjadji, a national super-featherweight champion. Both fighters came in at 134 ½ lbs, but Khan physically looked a different fighter to that in his last outing and bigger than Medjadji.

First it must be said that the Frenchman is not the stiffest opposition at the weight in Europe. His record of 17 wins contains only 3 knockouts, against 4 losses the most impressive of which was by KO to Kevin Mitchell in December 2005. He was scheduled to fight for the EBU-EU title in March next but will probably be forced to forego that one due to a suspension following his KO loss last night.

From the bell, Khan was as quick and as sharp as ever and, knowing the Frenchman’s weak KO record, as aggressive as I’ve seen him. He glided across the ring and quickly threw two hard left jabs at Medjadji with his body weight behind them. He got his opponent’s attention.

As Medjadji attempted to close with Khan with his own jab, Khan coolly bided his time and looked for openings. As the Frenchman landed a nice little straight left hand on the point of Khan’s chin, Khan was already throwing the counter: an arcing right hook thrown over Medjadji’s extended left which dropped him to the floor for a short count. He was quickly up but his legs betrayed him although his eyes seemed clear and the referee waved it off with two minutes to go.

Medjadji sportingly raised Amir’s hand and lead him around the ring to collect his plaudits from the crowd. Sadly, the crowd were none too pleased at the short affair. But, as Khan stated afterwards, he could see every single punch the Frenchman threw and simply had to wait to counter over Medjadji’s left hand which never returned to the guard position. So, although we’d all like to have seen more action, we did see an impressive performance from young Amir in racking up his 11th pro win in style.

He looked mature, physically strong and composed in this brief outing. He also demonstrated his growing awareness of the requirements of the pro game when he said after the fight that he had to get back into training now having had only a light work-out in the fight.

I saw a different Khan last night. Gone was the flurry punching skittering amateur. Here he looked mean, was aggressive, sussed out his opponent quickly and demolished him as he should. No-one can ask for more.