Amir Khan vs Canelo Alvarez: Flame of 2004 Olympics still burns in fearless Khan as he faces biggest challenge

Briton steps up to middleweight to take on Alvarez for his WBC title

Saul Alvarez goes head to head with Amir Khan (Getty )

He has walked through the tinkling cash caverns in Las Vegas before, gazed at sixty-feet of his smiling face, mixed it with 11 world champions in his career and never once entered the ring as the betting underdog.

It all changes for Amir Khan on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas when he fights Saul Canelo Alvarez for the WBC middleweight title and starts as a rank outsider in a fight that has been made 8 pounds above his best weight.

Khan has been fighting current, future and fallen world champions for seven years in a career that is a win or two away from being arguably the best in British boxing. Not one of the current British world champions, and there are 12 at the moment, has a record that compares with Khan’s exploits.

Men like Carl Froch, Lennox Lewis, Joe Calzaghe and Naseem Hamed shuffled down the same boxing boulevard, were in and out of hard fights against men that held versions of the world title and Khan is on their exalted periphery. Khan has fought a world champion in 11 of his last 14 fights and Alvarez makes it 12 in 15, a sequence that is genuinely impressive. Alvarez has fought 48 times and Khan has fought more world champions than the Mexican.

In many ways the fight against Alvarez is both new and old for Khan. He has been the main event in Las Vegas before, he has moved up in weight before, but he has never been given the chance to fight the very best and he has never, and this counts in the gambling city, started as an outsider with the bookies; he is also the heavy designated loser with the fans and experts. The Vegas bookies have placed Alvarez as high as 1-7, the British alternative is about 1-4; Khan is not fancied.

“The last time I was an underdog was in Athens at the Olympics,” said Khan. “The authorities did not want me to go, they said I had no chance and I fought without fear – I always fight without fear. This fight will be the same, no fear.” Khan was a lost child in the sweltering Greek summer and came close in the final to ending the dazzling career of possibly the greatest Cuban ever, Mario Kindelan.

Khan holds such sweet memories of that glorious and distant time, remembering extra details when he sits and talks about the first of his stunning boxing excursions. I have reminded him of his little boy voice, his pure innocence and the exhaustion that comes from five Olympic fights in less than two weeks. In Athens one night I caught a harrowing glimpse of him after the semi-final, it was close to midnight and he was being heavily assisted to a waiting car. He was pale and thin, supported on both sides by his coaches and barely strong enough to move his feet. He was 17 and less than 48-hours away from an Olympic final, a genuine little fighting hero with bruises, cuts and grazes. I stopped him and told him how proud he was making everybody. “They believe me now,” he said. He was right, we did.


 Amir Khan in training this week
 (Getty)

In Las Vegas he will make the walk to the ring knowing that he has been backed heavily to lose. Alvarez, with a mariachi band performing a specially commissioned song, will saunter through the sombrero horde and reveal the full extent of his packed body when he removes his white, green, red and gold gown. However, the weight is not going to be the deciding factor once they start fighting. Both camps have told tiny lies about what weight their men will be on the night; Alvarez will not be as heavy and Khan will not be as light, but they will both hit the legal limit of 155-pounds 30 hours before the first bell.

There is one tiny inconvenient detail that just about everybody seems to have overlooked or ignored, and it is something that is always present when a shock happens in a boxing ring: complacency. Every report, film and interview I have seen, read or listened to suggests that Alvarez and his people have pulled their fighting periscope up above Khan’s head to peer into the future. I can hear the sniggers behind the translated words of the fighter and his handlers and that could be a mistake. I know Khan has also heard them.

John H. Stracey did it

In 1975 John H. Stracey, from Bethnal Green in London’s east end, travelled to Mexico City and fought for the WBC welterweight title in a bull ring packed with about 30,000 against Jose Napoles, who had won the world title six years earlier.

It was a hard mission and inside 20 seconds there was a bad turn when Stracey was dropped. “I knew then what fighting for a world title was all about,” said Stracey. He stuck with it, Napoles started to age and in round six it was over and Stracey was the champion. Nobody could believe it.

“I tried to get a message to Amir, to tell him that others have done the impossible,” said Stracey. “Mind you, he’s a little bit warm that Alvarez.” Correct, but so was Napoles.