khan tonight

He threw a few nice uppercuts with his back to the ropes at one point, and that caught my eye because the inside game is one of his weaknesses. Otherwise, he still took too many clean shots on the chin. Good performance against a game but overmatched opponent.

 

He was throwing and slipping on the inside which is a plus, and he also judged distance better than before and fought in tight controlled bursts instead of going all out for the KO. His jab looked pretty damn great too, he was doubling and tripling that **** up, which was nice to see. All of these small, gradual improvements will add up in time, you can't expect Khan to look completely different after just one training camp with Virgil, and he still has a lot of things to work on. His defence for one, which was better last night albeit still pretty poor at times.

 

Why do you think his defence was better? It seemed that when Molina managed to plod through the blaze of handspeed, which was infrequent and obviously difficult for him, he could punch with Khan and invariably land a decent shot or two.

The fact they didn't amount to much or feature as a particular hallmark of the fight says more about the type of action that took place with Khan dominating range with handspeed and just being a few levels above Molina. This doesn't say much for Khan improving, at best its a case of the jury still being out, but arguably the signs didn't look all that great considering the ratio of Molina's shots landed to the amount of times he was actually in a range to land them. Then you have to consider the better opponents out there and their ability to overcome handspeed and ask the question again of whether his defence is improved or whether it is illusionary based on this fight.

 

Good point. And I myself am often guilty of amplifying his mistakes. The same mistakes that, when shown by other fighters, hardly any of us bat an eyelid. If he didn't have a weak and had never been knocked down as many times as he had, we'd be here concentrating far more on his positives than his negatives from last night.

 

Well for one he was actually leaning back and slipping shots, which is an improvement in and of itself. He was also judging distance well and pivoting nicely at times whenever Molina came rushing forward. I'm not saying he looked like a defensive genius or anything, and he was still getting caught with silly shots at times, but I saw some slight improvements. I agree though, they should put him in with a solid top 10 guy next so we can see just how much he has improved, if at all. Lopez is a good fight for Khan, he looked decent against Ortiz and he's really a natural 140 pounder.

 

He fought with more composure, and was impressive when up on the ropes.

But he's still pretty rubbish in my opinion. He doesn't know how to open up his opponents and the only way he lands is by diving straight at them like an amateur, he then dips back out with his glass chin completely exposed.

Even in this tune up fight against someone 5'5 he got caught with the left hook one too many times

Literally any B or C level counter puncher with some power can knock him out.

 

He did all these things against Malignaggi and Kotelnik though and there is a common theme between all these opponents. We were hailing him as 'improved' on these occasions as well, yet he faces Marcos Maidana, Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia and the supposed improvements went out of the window.

Personally I don't think its even possible for the quickest of learners to improve to the extent the commentators and a few people are saying just because he's with Virgil Hunter for a few months so I'm sceptical at the outset. Khan and a few people should be careful not to read too much into smoke and mirrors facilitated by last nights opponent.

 

Definitely, but I'm optimistic. Peterson or Lopez next would be decent fights for Khan to gauge just where he's at.