By Allen Fox: IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson looked great in beating Amir Khan last weekend by a 12 round split decision in one of the most exciting fights of 2011 on HBO in Washington, DC.

For Peterson, it was one of his best fights of his career, as he was able to show his superb inside fighting ability when he was being prevented from doing so by Khan’s constant fouling from pushing off to pulling down on his head. After the fight, Khan and his team pointed to the referee and the scorecards, suggesting that Peterson didn’t deserve to win.

Peterson expected complaints from Khan after the fight going in, and said to RingTV “I was expecting them to act this way. I guess they were pretty confident Khan would win the fight in my home town and all of that, and I just think when he didn’t win, I expected somebody like him to act that way…I know the referee didn’t cheat.”

Peterson went on to point out that the referee also blew a call by scoring a knockdown in the 1st round of the fight in which Khan wasn’t the one that landed a punch; it was Peterson landing a left hook and Khan shouldering him to the canvas.
Peterson saw it as a close fight that could have gone either way. He says that if he had lost the fight, he wouldn’t have cried about it afterwards the way that Khan has done. He would have accepted the loss and recognized it was a close fight and those kinds of things happen in close fights.

Khan and his team are upset with the referee taking off two points for Khan pushing Peterson in the 7th and 12th rounds. Referees rarely take points off for this kind of fouling and never twice in a fight. However, Khan was really shoving Peterson in the second of the fight, and it looked as if he was putting a lot of strength in some of his pushing off because Peterson was knocked back two or three fight at times.

The pushing off served the purpose of Khan by getting Peterson from in close and putting him back on the outside where Khan had the distant advantage. However, you’re not supposed to push off like this. Even though referees no longer take points away for this kind of thing, it doesn’t mean that it’s something you can use repeatedly to try and prevent a fighter from getting inside on you the way that Khan was doing.

Khan needed to use it rarely and not over and over again like he was in the second part of the fight. It almost looked like a schoolyard fight where one guy is shoving another guy to keep from getting hit by him. It was too obvious. Khan pushed off repeatedly, particularly in the past three rounds when he ran out of gas and was taking punishment on the inside.