Peterson plans on forcing Khan into a war in their rematch

By Boxing News - 12/12/2011 - Comments

Image: Peterson plans on forcing Khan into a war in their rematchBy William Mackay: IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) knows how to beat Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s), and he says he’s not going to waste valuable time trying to box Khan in their rematch early next year in March like he did in this fight. Peterson instead plans on going after Khan and forcing him to fight a war in the same way Peterson did in the second part of their fight last Saturday.

Khan didn’t look good with Peterson’s pressure and seemed to be crumbling in the same way he did in the last three rounds of his fight against Marcos Maidana last year.

In an interview at Boxingtalk.com, Peterson said “I won’t plan to box. It’s easy to see that Khan has trouble fighting on the inside, and I am a much better fighter on the inside. I will bring the fight to the inside as much as possible.”

Khan had no answers for Peterson’s inside attacks other than to hold him, pushing him, and bending his head down. Khan lost two points for the pushing, which he explains is the reason for his loss to Peterson. But the real truth is Khan lost because he couldn’t fight on the inside and was forced to run to cover up in his lack of skills. Khan was given credit for a 1st round knockdown, which as it turned out wasn’t a legitimate one.

The fouling that Khan did in the fight was very, very real and he got away with a lot more than two fouls in this fight. All total, Khan appeared to foul Peterson over 50 times and that’s just a conservative estimate. In each round, Khan either pushed Peterson or grabbed his head and bent it forward when he was fighting on the inside. Khan later said he did this because Peterson’s head was too low and he was afraid of getting hit with it. But Peterson’s head was always around the neck level of Khan even when he was working Khan’s body.

Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach likely gave him instructions to tie Peterson up inside to keep him from working his body. However, that quickly proved to be useless, because Peterson would keep punching Khan in the body when Khan would grab him in a clinch, and you could see Khan getting angry about this. It was as if he didn’t understand that fighters are allowed to keep punching when they have both hands free.

Khan quickly abandoned trying to clinch to shut Peterson down and moved to grabbing him around the head and pulling him forward. When Khan wasn’t using this illegal move, he was shoving Peterson hard to force him to the outside. Sometimes Khan would shove with two arms while at other times Khan would simply reach out with his left and shove Peterson away to keep him at a distance. Either way, it was completely illegal and the referee had to do something to stop Khan. As such, the referee took a point away from him in the 7th followed by another in the 12th when Khan failed to learn from the first penalization. It’s pretty clear in watching Khan’s past fights that the referees working the bouts have in large part given Khan a free pass to foul in this manner at will without taking points away. This has allowed Khan to avoid having to fight on the inside or to have to go through the painful learning curve to pick up those skills. Khan hasn’t had to adapt because referees have ignored Khan’s shoving his opponents away and/or grabbing their heads and pulling them forward while sometimes hitting them at the same time, as Khan did in stopping Zab Judah.



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