Khan and Hatton Start Road Back

Two of Britain's best fighters in recent years, Amir Khan and Ricky Hatton, this week set about rebuilding their reputations with American trainers of very different styles and temperaments. It will be fascinating to see who has made the better choice.

Khan has gone with Freddie Roach, a quietly spoken sage from Los Angeles, who continues his fight against Parkinson's disease with all the dignity he showed as a too-brave lightweight. Boxing, he acknowledges, probably did his health no favours, but it now gives him strength and purpose as a tutor.

Roach has many illustrious names on his training cv, including Manny Pacquiao, Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Mike Tyson, James Toney, Wayne McCullough, Steve Collins, Virgil Hill and Marlon Starling. For his latest gig, he has until 6 December to put the pieces back together for Khan, who makes his return then against an opponent yet to be named.

You can only hope their partnership is more fruitful than the disastrous one-bout collaboration between Khan and the Cuban Jorge Rubio, which resulted in the fighter flat on his back and the trainer making limp excuses about a communications breakdown.

Roach is a realist, in life and in the gym. He will not allow or listen to the bombast in which Khan was allowed to indulge before the Colombian Breidis Prescott destroyed him in 54 seconds. Roach will tell him no lies, but he will guide rather than bully.

Floyd Mayweather Snr is a different fighting animal. He is the father of the man who brought Hatton's career to a shuddering halt last December and will be in the Mancunian's corner when he fights the overrated New Yorker Paul Malignaggi in Las Vegas on 22 November.

There is no treading lightly with Mayweather Snr. He comes from the loud, in-your-face school of boxing manners. He is good, particularly working on a fighter's defence, but he is demanding. Whether Hatton can move out of the comfort zone he inhabited with his old friend Billy Graham since he was a teenager into the hothouse of shout-and-scream boxing that is Mayweather's favored method, I doubt. If he can't beat Malignaggi, talk this week of a big fight with De La Hoya will be blown away on the desert winds of Nevada.