Amir Khan Splits from Trainer Roach

By Parvez Fatteh, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com

Pakistani-British boxer Amir Khan officially announced what the general public had already gotten wind of when he confirmed that he had split from renowned trainer Freddie Roach. The change was made in the wake of damaging defeats at the hands of Lamont Petersen and most recently Danny Garcia, the latter of which resulted in the loss of his WBA and WBC light-welterweight titles.

“Officially I’ve left Freddie Roach. Just spoke to him and had a good professional chat and maybe in the future we work together,” Khan wrote on Twitter. “After nearly four years together, in which we enjoyed some great success, I part ways with my trainer Freddie Roach,” he wrote.

“I would like to thank him for all his hard work and help during this period and express my gratitude to him for the progress he helped bring about whilst I was under him. I would also like to thank his team. I loved every minute training in LA at the Wildcard Gym, learning and sparring alongside some truly great fighters and meeting some fantastic people. I feel now, however, is the right time in my career to make a fresh change and bring in a new trainer. I’m looking forward, and am excited, about the prospect of working alongside someone new. I will make an announcement in due course of who this will be. There are some specific aspects of my game I’m looking to work on and hopefully improve. My next training camp begins in early October and I will have everything in place by then.”

Khan may have grown tired of playing second fiddle to Roach’s highest profile client, Manny Pacquiao, who is generally considered the world’s best fighter pound-for-found. And Pacquiao’s schedule often dictated that Khan travel from his native England to such far-flung sites as Los Angeles and the Philippines in order to work with Roach.

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