By William Mackay: If you watched the fight last Saturday night you’ll have noticed that Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) spent the better part of the fight grabbing Lamont Peterson by the back of his neck and pulling his head forward in what appeared to be a method of shutting down Peterson’s offense.

Khan ended up losing the fight by a 12 round split decision, but claims he should have been given the win because he thinks he fought better.

In a recent interview at Sky Sports News Khan attempted to explain his rationale for grabbing Peterson’s head so often, saying “I took a lot of headbutts and he [referee Joe Cooper] didn’t do anything about it, and one time he hit me below the belt. Every time he came in with his head the best thing was for me to push him away and his head kept coming up and butting me. I had to hold his head down and push him away because the referee just wouldn’t do anything.”

That would sound alright if Peterson actually was coming in with his head, but Khan was grabbing ahold of Peterson when he was far apart from Khan, and pulling him forward in what seemed to be a desperate method of keeping him from punching.

It looked like Khan was just committed to trying to shut Peterson’s inside game down and instead of trying to clinch that fighters normally do, Khan instead would grab his opponents by the head and pull if forward and lean. However, Khan has done this same routine in many of his past fights, and it seems more of a way for Khan to shut down inside attacks than to prevent getting head butted like he says.

Peterson wasn’t charging forward head first the way that fighters do that head butt. Peterson was coming in slow and not particularly low and firing shots with his head at chest level. Khan wasn’t able to handle the inside attacks and was responding by grabbing his head.