At 135 Camacho knocks Khan out. No doubt about it. Camacho was excellent at 135 and Khan was shit at 135. 140 is more fair for Khan. It was Khan's best weight, and not Camacho's best weight. HOWEVER, the Camacho that beat Howard Davis at 140 still beats Khan. It simply comes down to the fact that outside of having excellent handspeed, Khan is a horrible fighter. And Camacho had better handspeed, thus nullifying the only thing Khan has. Camacho was FAR more skilled, had a much higher ring IQ, and more talented overall. Just a different caliber fighter than Khan.
Better handspeed than Khan? Umm.... YES!!!! In my humble opinion, next to Roy, Camacho had the fastest hands of all time. He easily had faster hands than Floyd as well. Floyd vs Camacho at 130-135 is a better matchup than this. Khan is garbage and doesn't deserve to be compared to a prime Camacho.
I agree with X at having Camacho's hands 2nd all-time behind RJJ Super fast when it came to single shots, flurries, and full-on combos with leverage.
I'd expect a close fight between Khan and Howard Davis at 140. Camacho shut Davis out at and made him look like sloth. Davis would LATER go on to draw with a young Mel Taylor. Camacho if anything is underrated. People will only remember the flash, and that he was a coke head. They'll forget that he was at one point a top 5 P4P fighter, in the 80s golden years when Hagler, Spinks and Pryor were all in their primes still. Khan's never been a top P4P fighter, not even 5-6 years ago when the overall talent pool in the sport was in the shitter and lower than it is now.
At boxingscene, they really think Khan is this top pound 4 pound fighter and that he'd beat a lot of greats. I've seen a few say he'd beat all of today's top welterweights but that's another story. Camacho was just a better fighter than Khan.
He was rated way too highly on the p4p list at the time. A bit like Hamed in his time. Both were good fighters, but their eccentricity, their antics and their popularity resulted in them being extremely overrated. BOth shown subsequently that they didn't deserved all the accolades they were getting. And I'm saying this as a fan of both. Now, dont get me wrong, I would pick Camacho against Khan, but his lenght, handspeed and camacho average power would make this a very competitive fight
If you wanna compare Camacho to Hamed, that's fine. Both peaked in their early 20s then were shells by their late 20s. Both had short, yet pretty impressive primes. Both were overrated IN THEIR DAY, but have become underrated nowadays. Amir Khan on the other hand, is just not a quality fighter and never was. He's one of THE most overhyped fighters of all time, for someone who's not especially good. Hamed and Camacho were quality/elite fighters for a period of time. I don't see it as particularly competitive if we're talking about the mid 80s Camacho. The Camacho that beat JL Ramirez and Louie Burke thrashes Khan easily, regardless if it's 135 or 140. Just a different league of fighter. I see it as competitive ONLY if we're talking prime Khan vs the early 90s Camacho, only because Camacho had lost a good deal of speed and sharpness by then.
Hector Camacho would be watching an Amir Khan fight, and Khan would getting beat up, and Hector would be like...."Go on man, beat him some more, a ha ha ha" :: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPlAaPyEhtI
I get annoyed with the overrating of Khan perhaps more than any other fighter, with the possible exception of Haye. It's not really anything personal with Khan himself, the reason is that I can't stand when the skills of fast fighters get overrated simply due to their speed, and less fast and flashy ones get underrated skill-wise. That's not to say Khan is some totally skill-less bum, but for a guy near the top of his division and someone who was (laughably) being called by some as some future p4p fighter, his skills are wholly unimpressive. He frequently throws a one-two and practically falls into his opponent when doing so because his balance and composure is so poor. His knockdown of Peterson came when he threw his ugly one-two, practically skipped towards Peterson, shoved Peterson down with his left arm, and they ruled it a KD. I think often it's this Ali/Leonard thing, where people think because someone is fast and moving around the ring, it must mean they are really skilled and doing really well. Nevermind that Leonard's best work was when he was more flat-footed, and both guys had MUCH more to them then the clips of them dancing around the ring, shuffling, throwing quick flurries. Khan squeaked by Maidana by the narrowest of margins. After a great start, Khan started getting timed and getting caught. Khan would throw these quick shots that often were here hitting air. Same thing against Peterson, although he seemed to land more clean shots in that one throughout. He still clearly took the majority of the clean shots, particularly to the body, he was getting the ring cut off and taking a lot of shots. Yet people still act like Khan is some master boxer. It annoys me to no end. Khan won the first 2 rounds versus Garcia, but it wasn't a total domination when he got caught in the 3rd. This wasn't Barkley-Hearns 1. He got caught with some looping shots and body punches before he got caught, and he wasn't catching Garcia all that consistently either. Garcia always looks to land that left hook. So he spends the fight trying to time the left hook, and when he does, idiots say "Khan was owning Garcia until he got caught with a Hail Mary punch!". I did think Khan looked good for much of the Collazo fight. I was impressed, he was picking his punches well, nice double right hands, doing things more deliberately than just for the sake of doing it and impressing dummies. His combos were much more like real combos, not aimless arm flurries. But it seems like he resorts to bad habits and instincts. Early on, he showed some effective defensive moves. Sure, they were telegraphed punches from Collazo, but with my low opinion of Khan, I was thinking "wow, Khan is actually ducking punches, keeping his eye on Collazo while doing it, he's countering". But he increasingly kept holding and shoving Collazo's head down with his elbow. He got a point taken away, and then got caught by some shots after that. As Paulie Malignaggi said while commentating, Khan got a point taken away and didn't want to do his usual holding, and got hit. He had to use proper defensive techniques, and he didn't have it or forgot what he had learned. He resorts back to his instincts. Stuff like this is why I have always laughed at the notion of him being this tough style matchup for a truly great boxer like Mayweather, even at 38-39.
I agree with you. By the late 80s/early 90s, Camacho had declined so much from the drugs and lifestyle that he was going life and death with the likes of Greg Haugen and a Ray Mancini who hadn't fought in 3 years. Someone with Camacho's talent should never struggle with those fighters. I thought the same thing with Judah-Baldomir. How does someone with the talent of Zab Judah lose to Carlos Fucking Baldomir. But Camacho comprehensively beat Howard Davis and made Davis's speed look ordinary. That is something, and that Camacho would handle Amir. Khan might beat the Camacho of a couple years later. After all the Khan bashing, I'll say this about Khan, he has more heart than Camacho. Camacho gets hurt or tagged consistently and his priority becomes to last the distance. He goes into survival mode. Khan at least fights to win after he's been hurt.
I think the thing with Khan is that from the get-go, he had gotten off on the wrong foot with hard core fans. The silver medal, they hype that came with it, endorsements and sponsors before even having a pro fight, the Frank Warren factor, the hand picked opponents, the huge social media following, and then the glass jaw. His arrogance also makes him unlikeable. With regard to his "skills" they're not bad, per say. But he has always gotten by more so on hand speed and athletic talent. His jab has always been more of a flick than anything else, his right hand is telegraphed and poorly delivered, he has no power. His distance management is bad (As you said, always falling over himself when he punches, or overshooting shots), can't counter punch (Because he likes timing and accuracy on his punches), and he even appears to have trouble blocking and parrying punches... Very predictable in his approach. I think he's cannon fodder for any top guy at 147-154. And I would favor Crawford and Postol over him as well, and they're both at 140.
Camacho may have some early trouble dealing with Khan's height and reach, but once he gets in his groove, he dominates.
Erractic, I don't see how Khan had more heart than Camacho. Camacho took a HORRIBLE whuppin against Chavez, and could have taken the easy way out and quit on his stool. Fighters have quit on their stools on much LESSER beatings. Instead, he took his 12 round ass whuppin like a man and tried throughout. Camacho had heart, it's a misconception when people claim he lacked heart. One big difference between Camacho and Khan.... Camacho was a lot MEANER. Especially the young Camacho, very mean and rough guy in there. Camacho was a FIGHTER. Khan is just an athlete.
Maybe I was just being generous to Khan. Camacho always had a tendency to go into a defensive shell and look to survive. I've never seen that from Khan, maybe because he just doesn't have enough defensive skills to go into a shell, but usually he fights it out rather than just looking to hear the final bell. Against the likes of Rosario, DLH, Trinidad, maybe Khan would do the same and go into a defensive shell, but the fight would probably end the same round Khan gets hurt, so we wouldn't know.
