Amir Khan - Is he a British great already ???

If he quit tomorrow would he be a great of British boxing????

Alan minter is regarded as one..........

Minter would be a top 35 fighter or so, I would suggest Truss. Khan would be ahead of that by around a dozen spots, I should say, on his accomplishments to date. To travel above that 22-23 bracket where I currently have him, I think that he's going to need to do a good number on the top names in one particular division, I would hope light-welter. There was a point when I had he and Froch about neck and neck, but there can be no question of that at this stage

Still, depends what you call great. If you can say that only a couple of dozen people who have originated from your country have ever been better than you at your profession, you're doing OK, I would have thought.

Thanks for the post......I imagine the greatness goalposts have changed a little since Minter's days with the multitude of belts on offer....Maybe got tougher to attain the accolade..

Me I think he's a British great for what it's worth as few I've seen have achieved more than him on the world stage..

Obviously he is some way behind Hatton and Froch.....

To set things in some context, for you Truss, of current/very recent UK fighters, I have Calzaghe at 6, Froch at 12, Hatton at 16, Khan at 23 and Haye at 29. Now, some of those may change, but it may also be that these guys have more or less settled into what they're going to be at this stage.

I have Haye above khan Captain....

Unified at cruiser (I know it's only cruiser) and then won the big one at Heavy.....

Big feat for anyone........ Wlad was disappointing..but he has trailblazed in waters no Brit has trailblazed before..

Humph to both cruiser and "the big one", for me, Truss. As far as I'm concerned, Haye has been well beaten by the best fighter that he faced in each of his two divisions and drops house points accordingly. Khan has beaten better fighters on the whole (Mormeck the outstanding exception), so I'm happy with their relative showings at the moment.

Humph.......Never heard that expression..

I can see where you are coming from.......

Suppose a lot of it is about titles and what they are perceived to be worth...

A lot of merit to your argument..

It's short for harrumph, Truss, and indicates that I'm an old, argumentative git.

Wouldn't say you were old, Captain!!

I agree that Haye might just pip Khan

He was a unified champ at cruiser and was a heavyweight champion. He lost to Wlad but Wlad is the best heavy since Lewis and has been #1 for almost a decade

Khan is/was a good lightwelter champ but losses to Peterson and Garcia aren't at the level of losing to Wlad and Haye wasn't knocked out like khan was.

He has 2 good wins imo in Maidana and Judah, 2 solid wins in Kotelnik and Malifnaggi them your scratching your head. He hasn't win a really big fight or had a big fight with he likes of Bradley/Alexander when they were unbeaten etc

He is only 26 though and a win over Garcia/Peterson or both would be good or Matthysse who is #2 at LWW atm, also a win over an unbeaten welterweight champ in Brook should brook beat Alexander as that fight will be on the horizon

I believe that for Khan to regain some decent world status... he'll have to over turn some of his losses..

Haye was KO'd by Thompson in a non-world title fight, which surely counts, WHU. Haye's loss to WK was also an utterly demeaning farce, worse than any one-punch KO, in my opinion. Those 4 wins of Khan's that you mention easily eclipse Haye's top 2 triumphs of Mormeck and Valuev.

Think the loss would have been less degrading had he not got his toe out at the press conference...

1. Showed he lacked any class whatsoever...

2. If true which it wasn't........It let down every Brit who travelled to Germany expecting to see a 100% Haye with a fighting chance of victory!1

Kind of showed how up his own butt the guy is ...and insensitive..

Even when he talks about acting..he say's I don't want to be a beefcake..I want to be like Deniro, Al Pacino!!

Doesn't he realise how long these guys have acted and just how many unemployed actors with shed loads of talent there are out there..

He is cheap..having said that I still have him a shade above Khan at the moment.

Hayes loss to Thompson equates to Khan's loss to Prescott. Both young, over-eager, made rookie mistakes and paid for it. And importantly both went on to much much bigger things, beating substantially better fighters.

Disagree.....whilst Haye's was a bad loss I think he took the guy lightly and was at a weight he struggled to make...

Khan lost the same way he did against Garcia by getting caught sloppily....

Prescott would always trouble Khan..

Khan's was the worst loss because his was a technical deficiency..

captain carrantuohil wrote:Haye was KO'd by Thompson in a non-world title fight, which surely counts, WHU. Haye's loss to WK was also an utterly demeaning farce, worse than any one-punch KO, in my opinion. Those 4 wins of Khan's that you mention easily eclipse Haye's top 2 triumphs of Mormeck and Valuev.

As Tophat alluded too the Thompson loss can draw comparisons to the Prescott KO

While Khan was younger than Haye when their respective losses occurred and Prescott was fresher tha Thompson, Prescott wasn't as good as Thompson and while khan got blitzed in one round, Haye was trying to khan dto knock Thompsons he's diff that he went all out and gassed

On the whole Khans loss was worse loss but the age of not when they lost meant that I didn't mention it

Yes Hayes ledger wasn't great but he bea true guys he was suppose to beat whereas Khan shouldnt have lost to Garica and Peterson and on another day a ref could have stopped him in the 10th against Maidana

At the time they occured I think they were comparable - i.e. rookie mistakes (Khan being too gung-ho and Haye gassing).

It's just in hindsight Haye looks to have learnt a little by controlling his pace better whereas Khan has been shown by subsequent fighters to still have some of the same flaws (though I'm hoping, being so young, Hill can iron some of those creases out).

Khan's was a rookie mistake??......More of an inherent weakness for me..

Maidana, Garcia and even Petersen......To me he is still the same.....gung-ho..

But fairplay.

Khan's win over Kotelnik really is over looked, that was a great performance shutting out a world level operator who had already beaten Maidana in a close fight and went on to get absolutely shafted by another world level operator in Alexander.

We since know it was an exposion of an inherent flaw, at the time it just looked a rookie mistake. Especially with the classy Kotelnik performance only a few fights later (one of his best).

..Like the way you sad World-level instead of world-class..

You'd make a good politician..

No, decent but nothing special take away the Olympic medal and media hype he is below Ricky Burns for me.

You can't be serious...

I am totally serious, whether you agree is a matter for you, not my concern just giving my opinion in answer to your question fella.

Just thought such a left field opinion might be explained......

More than entitled to your opinion........

Thanks mate

Where's Az when you need him.....??

Top Hat, do you think that Haye really beat "substantially better fighters" after losing to the Cat? Mormeck was good, but not miles above Carl, I would say. The rest, though? None of them come anywhere near as fighters, with Valuev a good win purely by virtue of his size. Khan, on the other hand certainly has moved on since the Prescott fight. What really annoys me about Haye, and leads me to place him below Khan is the squandered opportunity to establish himself as a really top fighter by beating really top opposition. He just hasn't done it at all.

khan picked the path of least resistance to pick up a world title (something minter could never have done), kotelnik is solid but pretty average at eveything and most importantly doesnt pack a punch, didnt see how khan could lose that fight. maidana is a better win for me even though kotelnik is a better boxer than him, simply because of styles.

would have haye over him because he was the man at a weight, didnt pick up a paper title then lose it to whom i consider pretty average fighters in peterson and garcia. i dont consider a win over judah as anything special, he was well shot. you might as well give calzaghe credit for beating jones if your on those lines.

think by the end of thier careers khan will be above haye though but at the moment for me he's not. using the original comparsion with minter, haye would have been a world champ if the belts were as they were in the 80's. im not sure khan would have been

Maybe Minter deserves to be on my lottery thread...

Certainly getting Vito was a lucky stroke..

captain carrantuohil wrote:Top Hat, do you think that Haye really beat "substantially better fighters" after losing to the Cat? Mormeck was good, but not miles above Carl, I would say. The rest, though? None of them come anywhere near as fighters, with Valuev a good win purely by virtue of his size. Khan, on the other hand certainly has moved on since the Prescott fight. What really annoys me about Haye, and leads me to place him below Khan is the squandered opportunity to establish himself as a really top fighter by beating really top opposition. He just hasn't done it at all.

The Cat was a wily old vet when Haye fought him. Yes he'd had a good overall career, and was more than the club fighter Prescott was to Khan, but it was his experience that won him that fight. He was pretty over-the-hill otherwise, very much in the twighlight of his career. I would put Fragomeni, for example, ahead of 'that' version of Carl. And that's without looking at Haye's HW fights. And the Mormeck win was better than one over any version of Carl.

You can't criticise Haye for "he hasn't done it all" whist citing Khan ahead of him in that respect when Haye has unified a division and become 'the man' at the weight - something Khan has never done, albeit operating in a stronger division. Haye's CW cv is pretty clean and at HW it only looks really weak because he's shown no interest in fighting anyone apart from the 2 brothers that control the entire division, so he has very little padding. It would be like Khan refusing to fight anyone other than Floyd or Pac for 3 yrs. Instead he's taken on a decent bunch of divisional contenders so his cv has more depth at the weight.

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Maybe Minter deserves to be on my lottery thread...

Certainly getting Vito was a lucky stroke..

although rather unlucky that hagler was right round the corner to take them back

I'm not sure, Truss. I think Minter toiled long and hard enough to be a worthy Middleweight champion. If anything, his career was perhaps marred by a shade of bad luck here and there, given that his vulnerable eyebrows, ala Cooper or McGowan, caused him to lose a few fights that he might have won otherwise.

I believe he was up on the cards against Tona, who was a very solid 160 lb operator himself, before cuts forced a premature end. Tona was a European champion, I think (in the days where that title actually meant a fair bit) and got a shot at Monzon on the back of that unsatisfactory win against Minter. He was thrashed in that one, of course, and so would Minter have been realistically, but I'm just pointing out that Minter was one of the better Middleweights going for a fair while.

Sorry everyone, looks like my memory played a slight trick on me and Tonna actually got his shot at Monzon before he boxed Minter.....But nevertheless, I think my general point still just about stands!

At the time that Minter was the undisputed world champion (and it might be an interesting exercise to pick out his best wins as well), the WBC light-welterweight champion was Saoul Mamby, who never showed much inclination to fight either Cervantes or Pryor to unify the belts. I see nothing to suggest that Mamby would have had too much for Khan. Boxing was simpler, in many ways in years gone by, but spurious belts go back a century.

Minter was hampered by cuts, but was a good, solid technician. Beating an ancient Griffith, Ray Seales and Antuofermo don't make him any better than very good, however, not for me in any case. Unlucky to run into Hagler, of course, but wouldn't have bet that much on him holding the belts for long, even without the Marvellous One's presence. Someone like Jim Watt, Minter's contemporary as a world champion, really does deserve a higher ranking than Khan. He did after all, prove himself to be the premier lightweight in that shortish space between Duran and Arguello, and beat some excellent fighters to do so.

captain- my point about khan not being a champ was more about if the belt werent so split up like in the 80's, so at lightweight Jmm would have been the man, mayweather at welter but could easy argue they could have been around 140. at 140 when he beat kotelnik out of the belt holders probably bradley was the man, having hindsight to look back on with the loses to garcia and peterson cant see how khan could have picked up a title against any of them. not to mention pacman would have been around that weight if there wasnt so many options available to him

That's true, c&r, and is a point well made. However, we must imagine that Khan would have needed to meet and beat some of the men that he did as champion on the way up to fighting the Pacquiaos and mayweathers of this world. Would have given him some chance against Bradley, incidentally. Minter hit the jackpot by being manoeuvred into a title fight with one of the most limited middleweight champions in history. I would have expected someone like Tony Sibson to do a number on Vito.

The truth is that there aren't that many modern Britsh fighters who have established themselves as the best in their division. Khan is one of those who hasn't, although he got pretty close for a while. Froch, second best to an outstanding talent, ranks higher by virtue of his string of fine wins. It is doubtful that Minter, who did win the undisputed crown, was actually regarded as among the top two middleweights fighting at the time, regardless of his status as champion. Most of his best wins actually took place two or three years before he became champion (Licata, Tonna, Kevin Finnegan).

I'll accept that Haye was the premier cruiserweight for a year or so, but given the paucity of talent in that division, both historically and at the time, it counts for less. His heavyweight career has been a litany of missed opportunities.

Lot of love for Minter on here, personally think he is getting a bit too much on the back of holding a belt for a short time winning it from a pretty average holder.
Personally Id say Sibson was the better fighter, I think Hagler said Sibson gave him a real tough fight and rated him as one of his hardest opponents.

Who has he missed Captain? I can only think of Vitali.

Unless you include Wlad as a 'missed' opportunity to win.

The opportunity to fight and beat the rest of the field, Top hat, thereby proving his right to the Klitschko fights that are the only ones that he deigns to take. You know, Povetkin, Arreola, Adamek. These, within his division, are easily the equivalent of Khan's victories over Maidana and co. However, Haye won't take them, because he regards them as nonentities, not worthy of his time. I don''t see how he has demonstrated this, in all honesty.

Diggers wrote:Lot of love for Minter on here, personally think he is getting a bit too much on the back of holding a belt for a short time winning it from a pretty average holder.
Personally Id say Sibson was the better fighter, I think Hagler said Sibson gave him a real tough fight and rated him as one of his hardest opponents.

I think Hagler was being nice there. I think Sibson was a superb fighter, a credit to British boxing, who came up against an all time great at his best.

bhb001 wrote:

Diggers wrote:Lot of love for Minter on here, personally think he is getting a bit too much on the back of holding a belt for a short time winning it from a pretty average holder.
Personally Id say Sibson was the better fighter, I think Hagler said Sibson gave him a real tough fight and rated him as one of his hardest opponents.

I think Hagler was being nice there. I think Sibson was a superb fighter, a credit to British boxing, who came up against an all time great at his best.

Quite possibly, to be honest I wasnt really measuring Sibson against Hagler as I was Sibson against Minter. Sibson destroyed Minter when they fought, sure it was Minters last fight but was only 18 months after he won his belt against Antoufermo.

captain carrantuohil wrote:The opportunity to fight and beat the rest of the field, Top hat, thereby proving his right to the Klitschko fights that are the only ones that he deigns to take. You know, Povetkin, Arreola, Adamek. These, within his division, are easily the equivalent of Khan's victories over Maidana and co. However, Haye won't take them, because he regards them as nonentities, not worthy of his time. I don''t see how he has demonstrated this, in all honesty.

Totally see what you're saying, and basically agree, but the difference betwixt the two is that Haye has reached the pinnacle of the main body of his career and is essentially looking to close down with a few big ticket big money fights. Therefore the dynamic is slightly different than Khan who's fighting all these contenders because he has to and has not already worked himself into a position of being able to dictate matters.

Diggers wrote:

bhb001 wrote:

Diggers wrote:Lot of love for Minter on here, personally think he is getting a bit too much on the back of holding a belt for a short time winning it from a pretty average holder.
Personally Id say Sibson was the better fighter, I think Hagler said Sibson gave him a real tough fight and rated him as one of his hardest opponents.

I think Hagler was being nice there. I think Sibson was a superb fighter, a credit to British boxing, who came up against an all time great at his best.

Quite possibly, to be honest I wasnt really measuring Sibson against Hagler as I was Sibson against Minter. Sibson destroyed Minter when they fought, sure it was Minters last fight but was only 18 months after he won his belt against Antoufermo.

Sibson is a tough fight for any British middleweight and I'd agree he was better than Minter. I always enjoyed watching Sibbo fights on the telly!!

bhb001 wrote:

Diggers wrote:

bhb001 wrote:

Diggers wrote:Lot of love for Minter on here, personally think he is getting a bit too much on the back of holding a belt for a short time winning it from a pretty average holder.
Personally Id say Sibson was the better fighter, I think Hagler said Sibson gave him a real tough fight and rated him as one of his hardest opponents.

I think Hagler was being nice there. I think Sibson was a superb fighter, a credit to British boxing, who came up against an all time great at his best.

Quite possibly, to be honest I wasnt really measuring Sibson against Hagler as I was Sibson against Minter. Sibson destroyed Minter when they fought, sure it was Minters last fight but was only 18 months after he won his belt against Antoufermo.

Sibson is a tough fight for any British middleweight and I'd agree he was better than Minter. I always enjoyed watching Sibbo fights on the telly!!

Me too, think that was a really good era. I even remember listening to a few fights on the radio and really enjoying it, Maurice hope I think it was.

Maybe Minter shouldn't be on my lottery thread...

Sibson is a guy I have a lot of time for.....Beat Collins and fought a cracker against perennial Top 10 er Don Lee.....

Must admit I was a touch shocked at the state of his Andries loss.........

Andries...A real lottery winner... beating the awful JB Williamson and the stiff Jeff Harding...

Although Chyz wasn't a bad win..

Think that was Sibsons only venture to Light Heavy, and Andries may have defined the word limited but he also defined the phrase "one tough motherf....."
He certainly gave Tommy Hearns something to think about and not too many people managed that.

90-80.....89-77....89-80.......is giving Hearns something to think about...

I'd love a lot on my mind..

As I recall he had Andries on the deck about half a dozen times and although Tommy hit the deck at least once, there wasn't much from Dennis that caused him too much in the way of trouble

I would say yes, in terms of achievement, but his dodgy chin, 2 crushing KO losses and lack of ring generalship makes using 'great' in the same sentence as Khan a little jarring.

However, I would also rate him above Haye. He's beaten better fighters than Haye has. For me it is a simple as that. I'd also rate him above Minter. Partly because because Minter was damn lucky to get a shot against the ridiculously feather-fisted, short-armed Antuofermo and partly because I don't like Minter's stupid racist face.