Amir Khan vows to fight ‘with brains, not balls’ under new coach Virgil Hunter

London: Boxing star Amir Khan has promised new coach Virgil Hunter that he will fight with brains and not balls in the quest to regain his world champion status.

Khan lost his WBA light welterweight crown in a shock defeat by tough American Danny Garcia in July, the second of his career or third if you include the controversial and flawed Lamont Peterson bout, raising questions about the 25-year-old’s ability to stand up to big punchers as well as his boxing brain. Hunter has done a fantastic job in tightening up the defenses of WBC and WBA super-middleweight champ Andre Ward, and Khan hopes he can do the same for him. “By using my brains I will definitely come back and be a world champion. The reason I was so successful in the Olympics was because I knew the guys I was facing were physically stronger than me and at the time I was a boy, so I never got involved and just stuck to my jab,” the Daily Mirror quoted Khan, as saying. “I thought, ‘I’m a man now, but maybe I made a mistake thinking that. I will still be entertaining with good, classy boxing, with hand speed and combinations, and I will still be exciting, but I will be boxing more cautiously,” he added. Khan lays the blame for his last defeat with a bad training camp, in particular the sparring partners. “The reason I was all over the place and throwing long, looping shots was because I was ­having wars in sparring, which wasn’t right for me,” he said. “If I was sticking to instructions in sparring by boxing clever I wouldn’t have had those problems against Garcia. Whatever I do in sparring I do in the fight. The last three fights have been wars,” he added. ANI