British Pakistani Boxer Amir Khan focused on boxing Dimitriy Salita in Newcastle
Headlines, World Saturday, October 24th, 2009AMIR Khan has become a boxing saddo, and he loves it. Only 22, super-rich, world famous and an Olympic silver medalist, if the Muslim touched the stuff, he need never buy a drink in Bolton again.
But with a celebrity lifestyle beckoning, Khan fled the country, setting up home in Los Angeles knowing he would be a very small fish in the big pond the likes of the Beckhams call home.
Amir Khan
Little wonder that when Khan made his first trip to the renowned party city that is Newcastle yesterday, he did not hang around.
A man who has lived in the glare of a million flashbulbs in recent years is proud to have turned his back on the bright lights.
“It’s nice sometimes to be bored,” says Khan, who will be back on December 5 to defend his WBA light-welterweight title against mandatory challenger Dmitriy Salita at Newcastle Arena. “All I do is sleep and boxing.”
Officially Khan turned professional in May 2005, but he says it was actually September 6, 2008. That was the night Breidis Prescott’s left fist delivered a first-round knockout, a huge blow to his reputation and a potentially fatal one to his career.
Khan sees it as the making of him after a career in the comfort zone.
“The defeat did me the world of good,” he says of his only professional defeat. “If you’d have said to me after the defeat that within three fights I’d be a world champion, I wouldn’t have thought that would happen.
“I went to LA, changed my focus, changed my trainer (to the legendary Freddie Roach) and have become a professional fighter.
“I’m taking the sport more professionally. You need to do that because boxing is a sport where one punch can change a fight, as you saw in my defeat. That’s the point where I changed from a boy to a man.
“I love it out there. The weather is nice and I can just mind my own business and chill out. There are no distractions and I am totally focused. I’m in the best gym in the world.
“If it was anywhere in England, it would be very hard for me to go to a gym and be focused with all my friends there, still being young, having nice cars and being a wealthy young boxer. That does affect you. But when you’re in LA, people don’t see me as a superstar, they just see me as a normal person.
“Boxing is my life. It’s something I love doing. I never switch off from it because I’ve been doing it from the age of eight. It’s the whole of my life to be honest with you. I wake up and the first thing I think of is boxing.
“If I do something like play football, the first thing I think of is always boxing and it makes me think twice about it.
“I think, ‘Am I going to do anything stupid?’ It’s boxing, my religion and my family. They are the key things for me.
“Boxing is as close to me as my family are.”
Promoter Frank Warren is doing his best to ruin Khan’s humdrum existence. Although it was forced on him by the WBA, fighting New York-based Ukrainian Salita fits in nicely with the strategy to raise his profile in the States.
“The Americans love a British fighter,” says Khan.
“They know the British boxing fanbase is huge, they follow you everywhere no matter where you go.
“People are waiting for another champion and now I’ve won a world title, people are watching me. The gyms are full when I walk in.
“I know it’s soon going to be the way it is here in England. Maybe one day I’ll have to move away from America!”
Tickets are available from Newcastle Arena Box Office on 0844 248 5013 or www.seetickets.com.
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on Oct 24 2009. Filed under