By William Mackay: Trainer Freddie Roach says he’s impressed with the sparring sessions between Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan, and feels that Khan is showing a lot of improvement. However, Pacquiao is still getting the better of Khan after the initial stages of the sparring. Khan starts off well, but Pacquiao solves him and then takes charge.

Roach sees that as a sign that Khan is improving, but it could be just a case of Pacquiao taking it easy on Khan and then getting serious when he gets hit too many times. Pacquiao likely feels he has to put Khan in his place and then puts it in overdrive to pull away during the sessions.

“When they spar, it’s always good but, while Amir is more than able to hold his own, as it progresses Manny takes control,” Roach said to the dailystar.co.uk. “Amir has developed so much since I started working with him…Manny is a great fighter but Amir is certainly going in the right direction – that’s a fact.”

Roach sees Khan as a future Pacquiao type fighter for him, someone that can take over after Pacquiao hangs up the gloves in the near future. However, I think Roach is going to be in for a big disappointment. While I do think Khan can be successful if he’s matched against the right kinds of opponents, because he does well against guys without much power. But when Khan faces Floyd Mayweather Jr, Khan will lose badly. And when he faces other guys like Victor Ortiz, Andre Berto and Mike Jones, he’ll lose again.

Not sure if Khan will face those guys, because they can punch. My guess is Khan won’t be put in with them. He’ll instead likely get the Mayweather fight, lose it badly, and then get matched against beatable paper champions at welterweight and get selectively matched for the remainder of his career. Will it be the greatness that Roach is dreaming of for Khan? No. But perhaps Roach will be just happy with carefully managed success.

In that case, I see Khan doing very well. He’s great against certain opponents and if you match carefully, he’s nearly unbeatable. Roach won’t have Khan fight Marcos Maidana again, because he almost plucked the golden goose, and he also won’t face Breidis Prescott. He already destroyed Khan. Guerrero is probably is a no as well.