AMIR KHAN TURNS UP THE RHETORIC
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 21 Mar 2010
Smarting from the disrespect shown pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao whom he had credited for inspiring him and helping him in preparing for his fights, WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan has turned up the rhetoric against Paul Malignaggi whom he faces in a title showdown at Madison Square Garden”s WaMu Theatre on May 15.
Khan, according to the British newspaper The Sun has branded Malignaggi an “idiot” and said he intends to hammer the trash-talking New Yorker right in front of Malignaggi’s hometown fans.
Malignaggi has said he is determined to ruin Khan's American debut while the Olympic silver medalist Khan says he intends to do exactly what conditioning expert Alex Ariza wants him to do and that is to crush Malignaggi to teach his trash-talking opponent a lesson.
The 23 year old Khan who won the light-welterweight title from Andriy Kotelnik and scored a brutal first round knockout over Dmitriy Salita told The Sun: "Malignaggi's very disrespectful but it's one of those things. I'm very confident I'll beat him. I'm confident before every fight and I'll go in there to do my best. It's great to be fighting at the Mecca of boxing and I can't wait to get in the ring and fight this guy.”
Malignaggi downplayed the 76 second demolition of Salita claiming he was handpicked for Khan who shot back at the New Yorker "At the end of the day, Paulie's going to get knocked out — just like Salita did."
Khan conceded it is going to be a tough fight but added that "When a guy pulls faces and is disrespectful to you, it's because he's scared. I respect all my opponents and I think any good fighter does the same.
"But when you get idiots like Paulie, you let it be."
Ariza told us that Khan had begun training last Wednesday and “he looks good. He looks a lot better being the first week of camp and Freddie (Roach) said he was very impressed that he (Khan) had remembered so much from the last training camp we had preparing for Salita.”
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ronnie Nathanielsz.
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