By William Mackay: The new IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) feels his rematch with Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) won’t be nearly as tough a fight as last Saturday night’s 12 round split decision win for Peterson at the Convention center in Washington, DC. Peterson says he made some mistakes that fight that allowed Khan to have more success than he should have. Peterson plans on fixing those mistakes, taking the fight to Khan, not getting hit nearly as much, and forcing him to fight on the inside a lot more than last time.

Speaking with boxingtalk.com, Peterson said “It will be an easy fight. I wouldn’t change my game plan too much. I don’t plan to box as it’s easy to see that Khan has trouble fighting on the inside, and I am much better on the inside.I will bring the fight to the inside.”

Peterson points out in the interview that Khan’s constant pulling down of his head was making his back tight due to Khan leaning on him when he had him bent over. Moreover, Peterson’s neck was also hurting him from Khan’s pulling on it with both arms when fouling him. Peterson felt Khan should have been penalized for this move by referee Joe Cooper. But instead of Khan losing points for that foul, Khan was docked two points for pushing Peterson. Although Peterson acknowledged that Khan did push him a lot in the fight, Peterson was more bothered by Khan pulling down on his neck all the time.

Peterson feels that the penalization’s tainted the fight because Khan, his team and his supporters have pointed to that as the reason why Peterson won and not because of his fine performance. Peterson counters that argument by saying that Khan got credit for a bogus knockdown in the 1st round, which really was a slip by Peterson. As such, he sees those two things cancelling each other out.

If the Peterson-Khan negotiations don’t work out for a rematch, Peterson says he’d like to take on Brandon Rios and avenge the loss that his brother Anthony Peterson suffered against Rios.