When Amir Khan-Andreas Kotelnik was made, plenty of people, myself included, thought it another case of clever matchmaking for the rebounding, superstar-in-the-making Khan. Kotelnik was, by universal consensus, the weakest of the junior welterweight titleholders, nor was he much of a puncher, the latter being a vital aspect of the choice given Khan's disastrous one-round KO loss in 2008 against Breidis Prescott, an unknown Colombian who had a garish knockout record coming in to that fight.
My view has evolved in light of a six degrees of Kevin Bacon-like series of events since then. It goes like this: Marcos Maidana had his own superstar-in-the-making-ruining performance when he knocked out Victor Ortiz last month. Although the media and others, myself included, focused heavily on what Ortiz did and said wrong, Maidana looked like the real deal, like he'd be a tough night for just about junior welterweight. As it happened, Maidana had given Kotelnik all kinds of hell in the fight just before the Ortiz bout. Kotelnik may have been lucky to escape with the narrow win over Maidana, but in retrospect, going on relatively even terms with Maidana in light of his Ortiz knockout makes Kotelnik look all the more like the real deal himself. There's more to him besides, too.
Read more
Andriy Kotelnik vs. Amir Khan - 7/18/2009
Linear Mode
