By Rimar Cry: A fan of boxing but of no particular boxer, I don’t believe in getting behind one guy and arguing he’s the best fighter out there. It’s naive and blinkered to assume your guy will indefinitely win all of his bouts. Very few do. As is repeatedly said – styles make fights. Nobody is invincible and everybody has a weakness, which is why the strategy and what takes place outside the ring is so crucial.

That said, I like Khan inside the ring. I’ve watched his entire career and he’s been very entertaining. On the flip side, it’s easy to see why he’s disliked; outside the ring he’s developing into an egotistical caricature and long since lost any semblance of humility.

His detractors view Khan as an overhyped product of the Golden Boy marketing machine. They’re correct. He is definitely a product in which they have invested, and in which they expect to see a sizeable financial return. Yes his fights are largely cherry picked. Yes he’s being groomed for a massive Mayweather payday. Does this mean that he’s less than genuine? No, I don’t think so.

The common critique states that, in the ring, Khan runs away from his opponents. He’s chinny, lacks serious power, holds, pushes, has poor defence and no inside game. That’s very simplistic and total nonsense.

Boxing is not about mindlessly slugging it out in the middle of the ring, head hunting for a KO and taking unnecessary punishment in the process. Pugilism, in it’s truest form, is about avoiding damage, outwitting your opponent and capitalising on your strengths while exploiting their weaknesses. There’s always someone with a bigger punch or stronger chin, and a boxer’s job is to win regardless. The reality is that you do whatever’s necessary to stack the odds in your favour.

Fighters try and get away with whatever they can inside the ring, often on the blind side of the ref. Pushing, holding, whatever. You do your best to mess up the other guy’s rhythm & game plan. That’s fighting!

Khan doesn’t appear to have knock out power, so he should play to his natural advantage. He’s fast so he moves to create space and works from a comfortable distance. He holds, headlocks and pushes his opponent while capitalising on his own strengths: speed, agility, accuracy and naturally good footwork. If he’s chinny, so what? As long as he understands where his weaknesses lie, and fights in an appropriate way to accommodate them, he has the potential to become a very interesting champion: obviously flawed and always in danger of potentially being KO’d, but able to control a fight, dictate the pace and force a win against top tier opposition.

Peterson was one of those cherry picked fighters. He’s well known and by no means a push over, but the Khan camp did not anticipate the tenacity with which Peterson would resolve to win.

Despite what many keyboard critics suggest, Khan wasn’t exposed as fraudulent. It was a close fight. However, it highlighted some serious flaws in both Khan’s game and his attitude both inside and outside the ring. He’s definitely still a work in progress, and desperately needs to develop better technique on the inside. Defensively Khan should ignore his critics and stop the macho middle ring battle. He’s not built for that. Still timid from the Prescott saga, his movement against Kotelnik was the perfect way to win against a more durable fighter. He made it look easy. The number one rule is – don’t get hit.

Khan went toe to toe with Peterson, allowing him to force the pace of the fight and exploit some weaknesses that Maidana had found previously. Weaknesses that Khan has not worked on sufficiently, suggesting that he gave Peterson less than full respect.

Taken away from his game plan, Khan fell apart. Nobody is going to argue that Khan looked good in that fight.

Did Khan lose though? It’s almost impossible to say. The fight was controversial, even beyond the norm for recent title bouts. I’m not sure. I think Khan’s more skillful, but I don’t think his performance on the night was as good as Peterson’s. Lamont deserves respect for his part, but maybe not the win.

The problem is that there’s too much controversy to call this fight without being biased. Titles should not be decided by crooked ref’s and suspect judges, and the bottom line is that any non-official distracting a judge during the event (or perhaps worse), is simply unacceptable. A rematch is clearly required, even though Khan has been less that forthcoming in offering previous opponents that same grace.