About Amir Khan's

About Amir Khan's 

Amir Khan was born in Bolton in early December 1986. He showed early promise as a boxer and in 2003 he won a gold medal at the AAU Junior Olympic Games, closely followed by another gold medal at the European Student Championship in 2004. This early interest was encouraged by his father Shah Khan, who considered his son a born fighter and was confident that his son could be very successful at his chosen sport. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Khan won a silver medal at the age of 17.

Khan won the WBA World Light-Welterweight World Championship title, defeating Andreas Kotelnik in a unanimous decision over 12 rounds on July 2009. He is also the former Commonwealth lightweight champion, WBO Inter-Continental lightweight champion, and WBA International lightweight champion.

Amateur

The early amateur career of Khan was distinguished and his early gold medals were soon joined by an Olympic Silver Medal from the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens at the age of 17, which was two years earlier than even the great Muhammad Ali who won his Gold Medal at the age of 19 at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Khan was beaten to the gold by Cuban Mario Kindelan. They had met before when Kindelan had beaten Khan a few months earlier in Greece, Athens. By 2005, Khan was good enough to avenge these earlier defeats and he beat the Cuban by 19 points to 13 at the Reebok Stadium. This became Khan's last amateur fight before turning professional later in 2005 when he signed for one of the leading boxing promoter in England, Frank Warren.

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Charity Work and Volunteering

After the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir (Pakistan), he went to Kashmir to give food packets to the children in the camps. Khan also raised funds over £6,000 to help a fire fighter who was burnt badly after trying to help a family from an arson attack in Bolton.

He used his own money of around £1 million to open a boxing gym and Gloves Community Centre in Bolton in order to get the youngsters off the streets.

Background

Khan spent his early years supporting his local soccer team, Bolton Wanderers whilst attending Smithills school. This early support has since been repaid by the club who have allowed Khan to use their training facilities.

Amir's parents hail from the Punjab province of Pakistan, Rawalpindi and as a result he can speak Urdu and Panjabi in addition to his native English, his caste is Rajput Janjua.

He has a younger brother Haroon Khan who is in fact an amateur boxer and his first cousin, Sajid Mahmood is an English cricketer.

Professional

Khan's professional career began as his amateur career had ended, with a resounding victory over David Bailey in Bolton on July 16th 2005. A further three successful fights brought 2005 to an end and 2006 proved that the young Khan was as talented as his early promise seemed to indicate. In that year he fought a further six times, winning four of these fights inside the distance. This huge promise continued in 2007 with Khan fighting a further 5 times, all but one inside the distance. On mid 2008, Khan suffers first defeat at the hands of undefeated Columbian Breidis Prescott.

He underwent training at the famous Wild Card gym in Los Angeles under the watchful eyes of Freddie Roach who also trains Manny Pacquiao. Khan has recovered by easily winning his three subsequent fights, beating the highly ranked Marco Barrera in March 2009.

On July 18 2009, Khan won the WBA World Light-Welterweight Championship title in Manchester, defeating Andreas Kotelnik in a unanimous decision over 12 rounds. This has made Khan become the third youngest British world champion in boxing history behind Prince Naseem Hamed and Norwich's Herbie Hide.