By Vitali Shaposhnikov: Soon after Amir Khan suffered his KO loss to Danny Garcia, rumors concerning the future of Freddie Roach coaching Khan had developed. In a various interviews Khan had mentioned Roach’s name, and how he would like to change up with Freddie.
Many boxing fans took their thoughts to forums, and countless fans had interpreted that Amir was either pondering or had already decided to move on and separate from Freddie Roach..
In case you were one of those people worried about the future of the popular duo, don’t be concerned, because according to a recent interview of Freddie Roach by RingTV.com (http://ringtv.craveonline.com/blog/173929-roach-), this is not the case at all.
When asked about this subject, Roach said the following:
“I spoke with Amir and his dad yesterday, and the idea of changing trainers never came up. I told them that if they think that I’m too busy, and ‘if you need help getting somebody else, then I’ll help you.’ They said, ‘no, no, everything’s fine.’ They said ‘we just need to maybe get better sparring partners.’ So I had a very nice breakfast with Shah Khan and Amir. So we had a nice meeting yesterday, and no one talked about getting fired.”
I had my doubts when it came to the idea of Khan separating from Roach, because it is Roach who polished Khan and was able to successfully prepare him for numerous tough opponents.
There are too many different opinions of Roach out there, some good and some not so good, but all in all, Roach is a world class trainer with a massive amount of knowledge and the ability to effectively transfer that wisdom to his students.
I think that while sometimes changing trainers does lead to better results, those are very rare occasions, with most of those decisions leading to further debilitation of a fighter’s already learned skills. For Khan, who has been with Roach for a long time, and has learned Freddie’s way to training and instruction, going a different direction would be a self induced career suicide.
Seems like team Khan had talked to Roach about that fact that he no longer wishes to be number two during his training, and wants to have all of Roach’s time and attention when preparing for a fight. In previous training camps, Roach would interlace Pacquiao’s and Khan’s preparation, flying Amir out to the Philippines for part of his training camp.
I think that as a young and obviously emotional fighter, Amir needs that full attention as it would benefit his self esteem as well as mental state of mind.
Personally I am not a big fan of his, still Khan is a world class fighter with a tremendous potential to grow. If only he filtered some of the things that he sometimes says, he would limit the negative attention that he pulls in, as by talking too much he digs a deeper hole for himself.
I agree and believe Freddie that in a rematch Khan would likely dominate the fight, although it would be much less exciting my all means. Amir is a pretty good fighter from the outside, and that is exactly what he needs to stick to, especially against a heavy puncher like Garcia.
With Peterson and now this, Khan needs to do some serious damage control, and he needs to do it fast and in an impressive fashion. By totally dominating Garcia in a rematch, Khan would redeem himself and could then talk about something bigger. Getting a rematch against Garcia should not be much of a problem, as it gives a chance for Garcia to solidify his win and earn a much larger paycheck.
Losing to Garcia again, would send Amir to the abyss, and climbing back up would not be a quick nor easy task. Thus I am positive that Khan would take his time and be a lot more careful the second time around.