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| Amir 'King' Khan |
I've been a big fan of boxing for a number of years now and remember well when Khan was Britain's only boxing representative at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, he wowed the boxing fraternity and brought home Silver, losing in the final to the legendary Cuban and one of the greatest amateur boxers ever, Mario Kindelan. All that at the age of 17!
I have a soft spot for Khan for several reasons, but the main two are that like myself he's a British-Pakistani Muslim, which automatically makes him a huge role-model and secondly he's a local Lancashire lad, albeit from Bolton, but hey, we can't all be from Blackburn right! Us Brit-Pak's don't really have a lot of successful celebrity role-models, so we have to support the few we do through thick and thin!
Since the Olympics, Khan has divided opinion, some argue that he has often been handed things on a plate which other boxers have to work a lot harder for and they may have had a point except that Khan IS an Olympic silver-medallist and a poster-boy for the future of British boxing he was always going to get some breaks... get over it! There's also the nasty element too... If you YouTube some of Khan's early victories, some of the abuse and vitriol hurled at him in the comments section is astonishing and disgusting, with sinister racial undertones... The thing is Khan is very proud to be British (he regularly wears the Union Jack on his shorts), but he is also very proud of his Pakistani heritage and loves his religion... It's 2011 and it's great that 99% of people in Britain can accept that... (this number is based on 0 scientific study and like all great stats was plucked out the air)
To anyone from any walk of life... You will NEVER please everyone... Usually the number of people that don't like what you do, who you are etc. is probably greater than 1%, but ignore the haters, why waste your energy on those that are ignorant to your talents... I've just come back recently from New York and some of my Black American friends have a saying out there that neatly summarises this... 'You do you, fuck everythin' else'!
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| Amir Khan's giant billboard in New York Times Square! #proud |
As for Amir Khan, despite suffering a brutal loss in 2008 - which gave much joy to his haters - he has come back STRONG and that comeback journey culminated tonight in him unifying the light-welterweight division of boxing! He was down, he made drastic changes, he learnt his lesson, he shut-out his haters and he's conquering the world stage, the world is his oyster and who knows, maybe in 18 months time he may very well be the best pound-for-pound boxer in the entire world...
... As for me, I'm gonna use this night as an inspiration to learn to overcome the bad comedy gigs, learn the lessons, make the changes and do what I need to do to get to where I want to be...
And who knows Amir, maybe I'll see you in Hollywood someday!
- Tez
