Saturday Night Boxing Preview: Khan Out to Prove He Can Take a Punch

It has been a little over two years since Amir Khan got vaporized in one round in Manchester by Breidis Prescott. 

Since that night, his handlers have put him in with the following list of murderous punchers: Oisin Fagan, Andriy Kotelnik, Dmitriy Salita and Paulie Malignaggi. Take away his fifth-round technical decision win over the legendary but faded Marco Antonio Barrera, and the average KO percentage of the fighters he's faced since being knocked silly is around 36. 

Khan has obviously improved since Freddie Roach took the job as his trainer, but he's gone into the ring with no real fear of being drilled.

That finally changes Saturday. 

Marcos Maidana has cement blocks for fists. He throws every punch with terrible intentions and he's pretty accurate when tossing those bombs.

He got up off the floor against Victor Ortiz and proceeded to hammer him with enough shots to convince "Vicious" Victor that fighting wasn't really all that fun.  

He destroyed undefeated prospect Victor Cayo with a body shot. 

Khan will need to stay behind the jab and box, as he did when taking apart Malignaggi. The problem he may have is that eating shots from Maidana will not feel the same as they did from Paulie. He's good enough (and Maidana is limited enough) that he should be able to control the fight with his skills and intelligence.  

The feeling here is that he'll stay on the outside and pot shot his way to a win. But there will come a point in the fight when Maidana will catch him with something, and then we can see for ourselves if Khan is ready to carry the junior welterweight division or if he is the one being carried.

On the HBO undercard, the aforementioned Ortiz takes on Lamont Peterson. Peterson is trying to rebound after losing an entertaining but lopsided decision to the relentless Timothy Bradley. He's also trying to restore the family name after his younger brother Anthony was disqualified last month against Brandon Rios.  

Peterson quit, just like Ortiz did against Maidana, he just did it a different way. Instead of giving up, he decided he wanted to see for himself if he could bash Rios' genitalia through his own rectum.

Somewhere, Andrew Golota was smiling. Somewhere really, really scary.

Lamont can box, but Ortiz is quite skilled himself, and neither can afford a loss. The winner will set himself up most likely to fight either the Khan/Maidana winner, or the winner of the excellent Bradley/Alexander fight coming up next month.  

Joan Guzman is also fighting on the card, but his fight will not be televised. No word on whether or not his diet of twinkies and root beer has paid off.