Canada’s Vargas says key to victory is in Khan’s head
With several key details settled early in negotiation, a disagreement over gloves nearly torpedoed this Saturday’s welterweight fight between Toronto’s Sam Vargas and English star Amir Khan in Birmingham.
Vargas wanted to wear Everlast MX gloves, the kind favoured by middleweight champ Saul (Canelo) Alvarez, who knocked Khan unconscious with a single punch in their 2016 showdown. Khan’s team vetoed that idea and a stalemate ensued. Eventually all agreed the 29-year-old Vargas could wear Cleto Reyes gloves, resembling the ones Danny Garcia wore when he flattened Khan in their 2012 title bout.
The glove choice isn’t about Vargas’ hands. It’s about Khan’s head, the brutal reality of brain trauma in boxing, and underdog Vargas’ hope he can gain a mental edge by reminding Khan of his high-profile failures.
The knockout loss to Alvarez was the type of one-punch demolition that can alter careers — and not just Khan’s, Vargas believes.
“That feeling, it stays with you for the rest of your life,” said Vargas, who is 29-3-2 as a pro. “Even if your brain is healthy, you’re gonna have that mental trauma. ‘Oh s---. This might happen again.’ I’m trying to give him that déjà vu feeling. Once I get that doubt in him, it’s done.”
Links between boxing and brain injuries, both chronic and acute, are well established. And they’re achingly familiar to Chris Johnson, the Olympic bronze medallist and veteran coach training Vargas for Saturday’s bout. Johnson’s pro career ended when he suffered a subdural hematoma in 2001.
Still, Johnson doesn’t wrestle
with the ethical implications of spotting opportunity in the aftermath of a violent knockout. Instead, he points to fighters’ career trajectories, and pivots to a talking point he and Vargas echoed during training camp. Timing is everything.
Johnson says younger pros can bounce from savage knockouts. Julian Jackson’s destruction of Terry Norris is among the most violent ever, yet Norris won a world title two years later. But he says spectacular one-punch knockouts of older fighters often signal underlying weaknesses future opponents will exploit.
Johnson says that at age 31, and with three knockout losses on his 32-4 record, Khan is more likely to regress than rebound, and that Vargas shouldn’t feel guilty for capitalizing on a bigname opponent’s perceived decline.
“I’m just a student of the game and I see these things in front of me,” Johnson said. “I’m not telling Sammy go in there and bash his brains out. Be technical. Touch the body. I’m not trying to kill him …We’re preparing for a knockout. Is that wrong to say?”
Regardless of the moral ambiguity surrounding pushing for a knockout, it’s equally unclear whether the Alvarez fight has, in fact, damaged Khan for good.
In the two years since that loss Khan fought just once, a 39-second steamrolling of Niagara
Falls native Phil Lo Greco in April.
That night Khan flashed the dazzling speed that powers his offence and made him a world champ at 140 pounds. Khan’s fast hands and volume punching often win him early rounds.
From there some fighters — especially elite pros such as Alvarez and Garcia — adjust to
Khan’s speed, but most others never catch up.
Khan’s trainer, Joe Goosen, says every opponent thinks he can solve Khan’s speed — until he learns he can’t. Goosen respects Vargas’ bravado, but doesn’t expect the Colombian-born Canadian to overcome what the coach sees as a vast talent gap.
“Everyone’s got a pitch. I like their pitch,” Goosen said during Thursday’s news conference. “Good luck to the boys over there, but I’ve got the real athlete in the ring Saturday night.”
Saturday’s winner becomes the mandatory challenger for Manny Pacquiao’s WBA world welterweight title.
A Pacquiao bout would provide Vargas the spotlight he’s craved since he turned pro in 2010, but it’s an even higher-stakes event with Khan as the B-side. The pair have flirted in the past, and several times nearly signed off on a big-money showdown. Khan knows a loss to Vargas could permanently derail a potential late-career payday.
“If I see an opening, I’m going to take it,” Khan said during Thursday’s news conference. “I’ve trained like it’s a world title fight because I know where this fight can take me.”
But Vargas’ team thinks the Alvarez loss will keep Khan from getting there. Johnson says it’s not just the cannonball right hand Alvarez landed. He points to the sequence preceding it — Khan winning rounds until he starts losing them, unloading shots without strategy, getting beat to the punch despite a glaring speed advantage.
“He’ll carry his speed and his skills to a certain amount of rounds,” Vargas said. “But once he starts getting hit, his age and the damage he’s taken over his career is going to show up.”