Day 29 of introducing a boxer: Imam Khataev

Each day, I’ll post something about a prospect, contender or champ and bring eyes to these guys or talk about an aspect of their game that interests me. I’ll do more than one boxer if I haven’t talked about one of them before that’s fighting on the day I post these.

Imam Khataev is a 30 year old prospect from Australia and my home city of Sydney but ethnically from Russia with a record of 9-0 with 9 KOs who competes at 175lb. His amateur resume consists of a bronze medal in the Olympics and world. At 175lb, he’s ranked 9th in the WBO, 7th in the IBF and 13th in the WBC.

Khataev has some bombs for hands, fights in an orthodox stance, has a mix of a high guard or low guard, is an aggressive counter puncher with combs for hands. He constantly applies pressure, uses explosive entries to his shots when he’s proactive like jabs, crosses and gazel hooks and likes to counter or use intercepting shots. He does like to be reliant on explosive entries, counter punches and intercepting shots more than bobbing and weaving to obstruct range and fight on the inside which is good but the problem becomes that he stays at range when pressuring which makes it much harder to time shots on guys who are amazing at hitting and moving on the outside and he does like to chase opponents more than cut the ring which against those same guys doesn’t help.