{"id":9788,"date":"2009-10-23T17:32:22","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T17:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2009\/10\/23\/khan-salita-hit-the-uk\/"},"modified":"2016-01-07T16:44:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T16:44:31","slug":"khan-salita-hit-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2009\/10\/23\/khan-salita-hit-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Khan, Salita hit the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3>Boxers meet for first time ahead of December title fight<\/h3>\n<div><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"3\" align=\"right\" width=\"232\" height=\"212\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/theasiantoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/KhanSalita_232x180.jpg\"\/>AMIR Khan and Dimitriy Salita embarked on a hectic media tour yesterday to promote their December 5 fight.<\/strong><br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nThe pair will meet in Newcastle in seven weeks time for the first defence of Khan&#8217;s WBA light-welterweight title.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nHe won the belt with a landslide points win over Andreas Kotelnik in July.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nNow the 22-year-old will put the belt on the line against mandatory challenger Salita.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nThe New Yorker is undefeated in more than 30 fights, but is yet to meet anyone of Khan&#8217;s quality.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nSalita flew in from the States this week, and on Thursday morning joined Khan in Newcastle.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nBoth camps then caught an express train to London, where a further press conference was held. <br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nThere was plenty of mutual respect, a repeat of the good will the pair shared on a phoneline last week during a conference call.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n&#8220;He&#8217;s a great fighter, he&#8217;s a great boxer,&#8221; Khan said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know much about his amateur background but to be a number one mandatory, he must be good, and his record says it all.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n&#8220;I know Dimitriy is going to come into this fight wanting to win this world title so it&#8217;s going to be tough. I&#8217;m going to go in there and give it 110%.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n&#8220;I want to keep hold of this belt. I worked so hard to achieve it and I&#8217;m going to work even harder to keep hold of it.&#8221;<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nHowever Salita was equally as confident, saying: &#8220;&#8221;There&#8217;s no doubt that this is the biggest fight of my career. I&#8217;m very excited about it.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;m just focused on doing what I need to do. We did a teleconference last week and all the English writers were asking about his next fight. As far as I&#8217;m concerned there will be no next fight.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n&#8220;Amir won&#8217;t be defending his title. I&#8217;m coming to take it. I have a lot of respect for Amir, he&#8217;s a great boxer and Freddie&#8217;s a great coach, but I&#8217;m focused on doing what I need to do.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div><strong>Related Articles:<\/strong><\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/article.aspx?ArticleID=1632\">Peace breaks out in the boxing ring<\/a><\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/article.aspx?ArticleID=1613\">Salita relishing Khan Fight<\/a><\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/article.aspx?ArticleID=1596 \">Khan set to defend WBA title<\/a><\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/article.aspx?ArticleID=1632\"><font color=\"#800080\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/article.aspx?ArticleID=1613\"><font color=\"#800080\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div\/>&#13;\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boxers meet for first time ahead of December title fight AMIR Khan and Dimitriy Salita embarked on a hectic media tour yesterday to promote their December 5 fight.&#13; The pair will meet in Newcastle in seven weeks time for the first defence of Khan&#8217;s WBA light-welterweight title.&#13; He won the belt with a landslide points [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}