Amir Khan was facing one of the biggest challenges of his career late on Saturday night in Las Vegas. Devon Alexander is the man Floyd Mayweather Jr had tipped to take over the mantle in the Welterweight division when he retires and Khan was fighting him in his own backyard. The other issue was that Khan was again fighting a natural Welterweight, having moved up a division people were on the lookout to see if the extra power would cause him problems (Khan has only fought one natural Welterweight in the past, Luis Collazo).
There were to be no such problems though as Khan completely outclassed Devon Alexander from the beginning until the end. Khan’s speed advantage was clear from the first bell, he was bouncing around the ring, throwing 3, 4 and even 5 punch combinations at times and getting out of the way before Alexander could counter. Khan has always had great success against southpaws, perhaps this is down to his ability to be able to control the ring and keep the other fighter moving in a clockwise direction and therefore keeping them off balance and out of their comfort zone.
You could really only give Alexander a chance of winning 2 rounds in the fight and even those rounds were pretty equal. Khan was just slightly less dominant and all of the judges agreed scoring the fight 119-109, 118-110 and 120-108.
By round 4 of the fight it became clear that Devon Alexander’s game plan wasn’t going to work and he quickly ran out of ideas. It’s hard to tell what the game plan actually was in the first place but it seemed to revolve around trying to land a left hook on the counter. Unfortunately for him, Khan was too quick and saw it coming every time.
So a great night for Amir Khan. The question is, what’s next? Will the dream bout with Mayweather happen or will the more likely fight with Kell Brook be made, a big British contest for next summer.
1 Comment
Not a big fan of Amir Khan but your piece is well writen and insightful without being biased.