Amir Khan Reveals Why He Will Bounce Back To Be Better Than Ever

The most difficult bout of Amir Khan‘s career may be his most important as he prepares to take on the competition in the ONE Lightweight World Grand Prix.

At ONE: CALL TO GREATNESS, the Singaporean will face Ariel “Tarzan” Sexton in a quarter-final match on the back of a formative experience in his first World Title bout.

At ONE: CONQUEST OF CHAMPIONS the 24-year old athlete battled valiantly for five rounds against Eduard “The Landslide” Folayang, but the Evolve representative ultimately came up on the wrong side of a unanimous decision.

However, far from feeling demoralized after his efforts, he is treating the match as a valuable learning experience.

Looking back now, Khan can pinpoint exactly what went wrong for him that night. He is using that knowledge to help him become a better mixed martial artist ahead of his match at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on 22 February.

“I take away a lot,” Khan says about his World Title bout.

“Of course, I lost, but I learned much more than when I win,” he continues.

“When you win, you take away something from it, but not that much. When you lose, you can see the holes in your game – what you have to work on.”

As much as Khan would prefer to be standing with the ONE Lightweight World Championship around his waist right now, he is not disappointed in the overall experience.

To know that he worked his way up to World Title contention before his 25th birthday was an incredible achievement.

Add to that, the experience that Khan gained from spending 25-minutes in the cage with Folayang will only serve him to strive that much more for success in the future.

Now that he has gone the full five rounds once, there are some things he knows he will be able to take forward into future contests.

“I feel like I didn’t execute my game plan. I was just hesitant. I was worried because we went five rounds, and I thought I would gas out if I went all-out.

“I didn’t have any strength and conditioning, I didn’t have any specific conditioning program for the fight.”

Despite his disappointment, Khan did not stay discouraged for long.

He committed to fixing his errors, so he watched the bout back, spotted what he had done wrong, and vowed to make sure he did not make the same mistakes again.

“[It was] simple errors like me getting pressed against the cage. I was too complacent,” Khan explains.

“I was too relaxed. I was chilling there too much. I just needed to break away from the clinch and break away to my range.

“I feel like you see all those details when you lose. When you get back to training, you want to improve on those smallest details. You won’t know it’s a hole in your game until you get exposed in a fight.”

Maybe the best thing that Khan took away from his defeat is that he only grew hungrier in his hunt to become a World Champion one day.

Rather than feel like he hit a wall with this loss, Khan prefers to think of it as a small bump on his road to greatness.

“I don’t believe it’s the end of the line. You try one time, and you don’t give up,” Khan says.

“I feel it’s a different path for everyone. Some people get it the first time, some people get it the second, some people get it the third. Everyone has a different journey in this fight. It’s all how you take it from each fight into the next.

“I don’t really feel like it’s a big setback. I don’t feel it’s the end of the world. I just take the positives out of it and just grow from there. I know I’ll get it.”

Khan gets the chance to take his first step toward redemption when he returns to action at ONE: CALL TO GREATNESS as he competes in the opening round of the ONE Lightweight World Grand Prix.

Next Friday, 22 February, Khan plans on being a better, smarter athlete, and having all the tools to defeat Ariel Sexton.

“I feel I have to grow a lot in this game,” Khan says.

“I’m still young. I learned a lot from that fight, and I’m ready to take on all the lessons I learned into the next fight.”