By Allen Fox: If you had the misfortune to watch last Saturday’s championship fight between former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan and Lamont Peterson on HBO, you might well have noticed the lack of commentary from the HBO analysts Larry Merchant, Max Kellerman and Jim Lampley about Khan’s constant fouling and running for his life in the fight.

How all three HBO analysts could have ignored the holding, shoving, headlocks and the holding & hitting from Khan is very, very strange. It was like having a white elephant in the room and not commenting on it. I know Khan is an HBO house fighter now, but don’t you think that the HBO crew owes it to the boxing fans at home to at least try and explain why Khan spent every round pulling down on the back of Peterson’s head, shoving him, wrapping him in tight headlocks frequently and holding and hitting?

It looked so bad to watch Khan foul, and then to have HBO just say nothing about it just seemed wrong. I felt like they were afraid to say what was actually happening and instead were spinning by saying things that they felt would paint the correct picture that they wanted the boxing fans at home to have about Khan’s performance against Peterson.

For example, when Khan was penalized for giving Peterson a monstrous push in the 7th round, Merchant asked why Khan hadn’t received any prior warnings beforehand. The thing is you could hear the referee giving warnings frequently round after round to Khan, practically begging him to stop pushing and stopping pushing down on Peterson’s head.

To Kellerman’s credit, he did point out to Merchant that Khan had been warned but the subject was quickly dropped, as if they didn’t want to discuss it too much for fear of turning off would be Khan fans. And Khan went right back to fouling as if he’d never lost a point, and Merchant, Kellerman and Lampley continued to say nothing about the fouling from Khan. It was just really weird.

When Khan lost his second point in the 12th round for pushing, Merchant said “This is home cooking of a different kind.” And Lampley said “We don’t think we’ve seen anything like this in a long time.” Only Kellerman openly acknowledged that Khan had been fouling, saying “Look, he’s been pushing.”

After watching the fight, I was left with the impression that HBO really wants Khan to be a star for them and they weren’t going to talk about his defects. Instead we got a lot of talk about his hand speed, but not the fact that he couldn’t block punches to save his life, ran all night long in a frantic manner, and fouled frequently.

Freddie Roach, Khan’s trainer, said afterwards that the referee hadn’t been giving Khan warnings before taking the two points off. How Roach could have missed the constant warnings given to Khan throughout the fight is beyond me. Did Roach have wax clogging his ears last Saturday night?

I know they must want Khan to be a star, but you got to be open about what he’s doing in the ring both positively and negatively. HBO can’t just say how great he’s looking without giving the straight scoop about some of his glaring defects and tendencies.