Khan says he’ll never fight for an IBF title again

By William Mackay: According to thesun.co.uk, Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) will never fight for the International Boxing Federation (IBF) strap again after having canceled his appeal to the IBF on Tuesday when it was learned that referee Joe Cooper and WBA supervisor Michael Welsh wouldn’t be attending the hearing.

Those two were a huge part of Khan and his promoter Golden Boy Promotion’s case in trying to get Khan’s loss overturned and changed to a no contest. With Cooper and Welsh not in attendance, Khan and company would have had go on the other remaining complaints that they had, such as about the Mystery Man Mustafa Ameen seen sitting with Welsh during portions of the fight.

According to thesun.co.uk, Khan made a tweet about the IBF and then quickly deleted it. Here’s what Khan said: “It ain’t fair, they all in it together. Never will fight for the IBF again; WBA want an immediate rematch, so I’ll stick with that.”

The World Boxing Association has already ordered an immediate rematch between Khan and Peterson, but did it without a hearing. Peterson is appealing the WBA’s decision and is hoping they’ll change their minds about it. If they stick with the mandate for Peterson to give Khan an immediate rematch, then there’s a possibility that Peterson could vacate his WBA title rather than be forced into a rematch.

Khan and Golden Boy appear to be missing the boat in understanding Peterson and his trainer Barry Hunter. Both of those guys stand on their principals and they’d rather lose the title rather than get forced into taking a fight that they might not want to take at this time.

Khan and Golden Boy offered Peterson a 50-50 revenue split for their rematch, including Khan’s UK pay per view money. It’s a mighty tempting offer but it might not be good enough to lure Peterson if he’s being forced into the rematch. Peterson could get selected by Manny Pacquiao for his next fight on June 9th, and that’s a fight that would likely pay Peterson two to three times the amount he’d make in a Khan rematch.

ESPN writer Dan Rafael believes that Peterson will eventually decide to take the Khan rematch, and he sees the fight taking place in April. One issue that may prevent the Khan-Peterson rematch from taking place is Khan’s stance of not wanting to fight ever again in Washington, DC. Khan is afraid that he’ll get robbed if he goes there to fight Peterson again, even though you could hardly call Peterson’s win over Khan a robbery.

With Khan saying he won’t fight in Washington, DC and won’t fight ever again for the IBF, he’s really narrowing his world down with these never again type decisions. It’s kind of a negative way of seeing things and Khan may need to have someone sit him down and explain things clearly to him about boxing. These kinds of things happen but you can’t decide never to do something again just because you got burned once. I think that’s a really childish way of looking at things.

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