In a rare convergence of my various passions, 18-year-old Pakistani-British boxer Amir Khan made his pro debut in his hometown of Bolton last week, stopping tomato can David Bailey inside of a minute. Like (I assume) everybody in India, I rooted for this cat in the Olympics, where he was handled cleverly in the finals by Cuban master Mario Kindelan, and I was waiting for him to turn pro to see if it might FINALLY bring some boxing to Indian television. No such luck so far, but Khan fights again on the undercard of the Joe Calzaghe-TBA fight September 10. Will ESPN India step up and fork out some cash for the South Asia rights? This kid had 4.4 million people tuning in to watch his pro debut--not to shabby for British boxing. Check out Maxboxing for a nice profile of Khan that highlights some of the reasons he might be the next "Prince" Naseem Hamed. Let's just hope he takes a ring monicker that's not too Orientalist--and, please, not "Lion of the Punjab."
Saturday, July 23, 2005
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Cool--I've been waiting for Indiakistan to start supplying the world with some athletes. People rag on the Jews but there ain't a billion of us and we still produced Rod Carew, sort of.
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