Andriy Kotelnik is hardly taking his wide loss to Amir Khan with grace. The former titleholder says he didn't feel he was beaten "by enough." (Photo via www.telegraph.co.uk)

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There's really no other way to put the headline, so I didn't even try. Andriy Kotelnik has broken out that old, dumb line of thinking about having to REALLY BEAT the "champion," which he feels Amir Khan did not do in his July victory over Kotelnik.

Said Kotelnik:

"If that bout had taken place in any other country, everything could have been different. I think that you have to be far superior to beat a champion, you must win convincingly. Amir Khan didn’t do it. It’s not the way you beat a champion. If we compare this bout to the ones where I had been given a draw, though I’d been much stronger, Khan didn’t show anything special. I wasn’t expecting such subjective refereeing. The judges gave all the rounds to Khan, I believe it’s unjust."

I know some boxing fans still think this way, but it's so ridiculous to me that I won't even bother again. We've discussed it before. I'll just say in short that thinking there has to be a designated margin of victory for someone to lose their "championship" is moronic. On another point, Kotelnik has had one draw in his career, against Souleymane M'baye in 2007, so I don't know what "ones" he's talking about where he was given a draw.

Anyway, the bigger point here is really that Kotelnik was completely dominated by Khan. Official scores were 120-108, 118-111 and 118-111 for Khan. Bad Left Hook scored it 118-110 for Khan. The fight was not close at all. Kotelnik did nothing to Khan, whose speed and jab kept Kotelnik from ever getting out of the starting blocks in the fight, and when it appeared clear to everyone on earth that Kotelnik needed a knockout to win the fight, he never even tapped Khan's chin. Khan outboxed and outsmarted him for 12 rounds, and he did so with relative ease.

You know why the judges gave the rounds to Khan? Because he won them. Kotelnik apparently believes Khan should have fought stupider, which of course might have given him a chance to win. Instead, Khan fought a clean fight, dominated him for 36 minutes, and won. I've seen nobody argue this decision at all. Khan won, Kotelnik lost, and this is sour grapes from a fighter who was left frustrated, without his title, and back at the drawing board, routed by a superior physical specimen.

Kotelnik currently has nothing scheduled. Khan faces Dmitriy Salita on December 5 in the UK.

It was the Amir Khan show in Manchester, as he widely outpointed Andriy Kotelnik to win the WBA's junior welterweight title by decision. (REUTERS/Nigel Roddis)

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Andriy Kotelnik's caginess and smarts proved no match for the overwhelming handspeed and improved discipline of Amir Khan, allowing Khan to win the WBA junior welterweight title by landslide decision at a packed M.E.N. Arena in Manchester.

Khan (21-1, 15 KO) used a ton of movement, a lot of jabs, and some rather pitty-patty punching, to be honest, to keep Kotelnik (31-3-1, 13 KO) from ever getting untracked in the fight. It was easy to score, fairly easy to watch, and while the shift in style takes away some of Khan's more exciting elements, they also clearly make him a fighter better-designed to survive against top opponents. He only left his chin exposed a few times, and though Kotelnik hit him occasionally, he doesn't have one-punch power by any stretch and only seemed to buzz Khan one time.

I'm not trying to downgrade Khan's win at all. He clearly outboxed and outsmarted a really good fighter today, and Freddie Roach has certainly made him a better fighter already. It's clear as day. Roach deserves a lot of credit for what he's done already with Khan, whose physical gifts make him a great "reclamation project." And he dominated Kotelnik for the most part.

But he also never put a single dent in Kotelnik, and his style compared more to that of Paulie Malignaggi than a guy who has real power thanks to his incredible handspeed. This is the road he must travel, though. Everyone in the world knows about his dodgy chin, including Khan himself, no matter how much you hear that he sticks it out there in sparring to prove to other fighters it's not so bad. His punch resistance is terrible for a guy as good as him, and to make his bones in this sport, he's going to have to play keepaway.

With his speed, the stamina he showed in this fight, and his ability to make guys miss and keep them off of him with a long, piston-like jab (even if it's not landing much), he could have a renewed, yet different bright future.

Congratulations to Amir Khan on winning his first world title, and thanks to those that joined us for the round-by-round.

It may be all over for Enzo Maccarinelli after he was knocked out inside of three rounds by Dennis Lebedev. (Photo by John Gichigi/Getty Images)

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It was a showcase for ex-Olympians on the Manchester undercard of Kotelnik-Khan, but the biggest immediate news to come out of the show wasn't even featured on pay-per-view.

Former cruiserweight titlist Enzo Maccarinelli was stopped in the third round by unbeaten Dennis Lebedev, and after the fight, Maccarinelli indicated it may be time to retire. It marks the third time in four fights that he's been knocked out.

"It looks like it (retirement), to be honest I'm just devastated," Maccarinelli said. "I don't think I've got it anymore. I trained hard but nothing went right for me, I felt a bit gun-shy."

Maccarinelli (29-4, 22 KO) was also stopped in his last fight by Ola Afolabi, in 2008 by David Haye, and way back in his fourth professional fight in 2000 by Lee Swaby. He has in the past indicated an interest in going into mixed martial arts. I don't think he has the chin to make it as an elite fighter anywhere, even though he does have offensive skills. But if he's out there feeling like he can't pull the trigger, he's roadkill in boxing for sure.

Lebedev is now 18-0 with his 13th knockout tallied. The fight was for the vacant WBO inter-continental cruiserweight title, which means nothing but might get Lebedev in line for a title shot sometime.

Also in Manchester, Olympians James DeGale, Frankie Gavin and Billy Joe Saunders all won impressively and quickly. DeGale stopped Ciaran Healy in the first round, with Gavin and Saunders winning on second round stoppages. Gavin delivered a wicked body shot to knock down opponent Graham Fearn. Fearn somehow recovered, but the fight was waved off moments later.

The fight of the night on the Sky Box Office telecast was super-arrogant Anthony Small's eighth-round stoppage of Matthew Hall. Small started slow and jawed a ton, so much that the referee warned him about talking as well as holding. Once Small turned it on, though, his speed was way too much for Hall, who did do some good inside work in spots. It was a solid win for Small, who improves to 22-1 (16). Hall falls to 22-2 (15).

Also off TV, Kell Brook improved to 20-0 (13) with a third round stoppage of Michael Lomax, and Kevin Mitchell (29-0, 22 KO) beat journeyman Rudy Encarnacion via eighth round TKO.

York Hall Results

At York Hall, light heavyweight prospect Nathan Cleverly continues to sprint forward into being called light heavyweight contender Nathan Cleverly. He ripped apart previously unbeaten Danny McIntosh, who scored the highlight of the night when he performed a Shawn Michaels-like kip-up after being knocked down. Cleverly (17-0, 7 KO) finished him off in the seventh round.

Big-mouthed heavyweight Tyson Fury stayed unbeaten by knocking out big-waisted heavyweight Aleksandrs Selezens in the third. Fury is now 7-0, with all wins coming by stoppage.

In the fight of the day (at least between these two cards), veteran Jonathan Thaxton lost an upset decision to late sub Tom Glover in an entertaining, gutsy eight-round fight on points. Thaxton wound up losing the fight by a single point, which had been deducted in the seventh round for holding. It's a tough break for Thaxton (34-10, 19 KO), who at one point was on quite a good run. Glover (9-5-3, 0 KO) had about five pounds from the weigh-in on Thaxton, who was moving up from 135. Glover came in at 145 for the fight, with Thaxton just over 140.

(via www.boxnews.com.ua)

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The show should start live at 4pm ET in the States, and there are no promises with a thing like this, but we're going to do our very best to bring you live, round-by-round coverage and scoring of Andriy Kotelnik's 140-pound title defense against Amir Khan from M.E.N. Arena in Manchester.

Note: Yes, I and others here in the States will be watching this via an online stream. This fight is being presented by Sky Box Office in the UK, and under no circumstances do we condone our UK readers streaming this fight illegally. For those of us in the States, it's our only option. But we paid for March Badness, damn it, so you pay for Kotelnik-Khan. (Which is actually a far better fight than anything on March Badness, I'm just saying...)

Undercard:

Anthony Small v. Matthew Hall

Frankie Gavin v. Graham Fearn

James DeGale v. Ciaran Healy

Billy Joe Saunders v. Matt Scriven

Freddie Roach thinks his fighter Amir Khan will beat Andriy Kotelnik, and then expects a showdown with Ricky Hatton to happen in the near future. (via img.thesun.co.uk)

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Trainer Freddie Roach is, in many ways, a genius. He's an excellent trainer, picks apart opponents extremely well, and he also does one other thing like few others do: He puts the focus on himself. The fighters get to fight.

We've seen him do it with Manny Pacquiao, who is surely a phenomenon the likes of which we rarely see in any sport. Though Pacquiao commands more than his share of the attention at this point, it's Roach who does the big talking. Were Pacquiao to lose, it almost feels like it would be Roach that took the brunt of criticism, not the fighter. That's kind of smart.

Now he's doing with Amir Khan. Speaking at an open workout, Roach praised Khan's upcoming opponent, Andriy Kotelnik, while also sounding confident that Khan can beat the 140-pound titlist and claim his first strap. But there's some issue I take with some of his other comments and with the way he's shaping Khan's career in general.

Freddie talks about a fight between Khan and Ricky Hatton, which I think is a bad idea for their side for two major reasons:

1. Hatton is beloved. He's the flagship star of an entire generation of English boxing. I still think it sounds a lot like Oscar de la Hoya-Julio Cesar Chavez. The young guy whose fan response has been somewhat mixed swooping down and picking the bones of the faded hero.
2. Hatton, though he'll likely never be close to the fighter he was at his very best ever again, might knock Khan out if he can get him close.

Roach also halfway calls out Erik Morales, who is planning a comeback and really hasn't looked good since March 19, 2005, when he beat Pacquiao. That's the last fight Erik Morales won. He's 0-4 since then, hasn't fought since a 2007 loss to David Diaz, and is beyond the point where he was a shot top-level fighter. He's a shot mid-tier fighter that would be fighting at a weight (135, at least) that simply doesn't suit him.

Khan-Morales would probably look a lot like the farce that was Khan-Marco Antonio Barrera, though perhaps without the gruesome headbutt gash. No one would give Khan any credit for beating Erik Morales at this point, nor should they. The very idea of that fight is a travesty. Who would they like to call out next? Kevin Kelley? Paulie Ayala?