By Allen Fox: Amir Khan is hoping to get a ruling from the IBF, WBA and Washington State Athletic Commission about his appeal to have his 12 round decision loss overturned and switched to a victory for him over challenger Lamont Peterson.

Khan feels the referee Joe Cooper treated him unfairly during the fight by taking off a couple of points for pushing off of Peterson. The foul is rarely called, but none the less is considered a foul in the Rules of Boxing.

Khan’s manager Asif Vali has a different point of view on the fouls, saying in an interview at the Bolton News “There are no rules saying that a push is a point deduction.”

The Rules of boxing lists a number of fouls but it doesn’t state which ones require points to be taken off. You would assume that the referee can take a point off for any of the fouls listed in the rules violation book, even though some of them like pushing off are rarely called nowadays. The fact that this particular violation is still listed in the book suggests that Joe Cooper was in the right to take points off for Khan if he so wished. Cooper certainly gave Khan more than enough warnings to stop pushing, as he warned him at least twice before finally taking off the 1st point. By then Khan had already pushed a number of times.

Khan says “It’s the first time I have had points taken deducted. We have to put a complaint in, we’ll see where it goes.”

It matters little whether Khan has been penalized before, what’s important here is that Khan was warned for pushing off and he failed to heed Cooper’s warnings and lost points. After the first point deduction, Khan again failed to listen to stop pushing and it eventually led to a second point deduction. Khan may not have had points taken off in the past, but you can make a strong argument that he should have had points taken off for his fights against Marcos Maidana and Zab Judah.

In each one of those fights, Khan held them behind the head and pulled down on them. He also pushed off in both of those fights, especially in the Maidana fight. Khan was really shoving Maidana after getting hurt by him. In the Judah fight, Khan stopped him after taking his left arm and shoving down on Judah’s head it and then nailing him in the midsection with a right hand at the same time. At the very least, the knockdown should have been waived off and action resumed after Khan received a warning for holding and hitting.