By William Mackay: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schafer is waiting on the January 18th meeting from the International Boxing Federation (IBF) and the WBA to rule on his appeal to have the results of the Lamont Peterson vs. Amir Khan fight overturned or an immediate rematch so that Khan can remain the IBF/WBA light welterweight champion.

Schafer feels pretty good about his chances of having the results overturned and Golden Boy has dumped a big bunch of money in the appeal process. It’s hard to imagine that the decision will be overturned because Khan was clearly fouling constantly in the fight with the pushing off, headlocks, pulling down on the head and occasionally holding and hitting.

However, it’s very possible that the IBF or WBA will order an immediate rematch. That will be bad for Peterson, because he wants to get a payday fight before he faces Khan again. It’s doubtful that Peterson will get a fight against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao next, but he’d still like to have the opportunity to get one fight in before facing Khan in the rematch.

Schaefer doesn’t have much to go on for trying to get the fight overturned other than saying that Khan’s shoving shouldn’t be considered a foul because it’s not in the rule books. Schaefer also sees something suspicious with the delay in the judges’ scorecards being revealed. That seems rather flimsy at best, because there’s likely nothing in the rule books stating that the judges’ score cards have a tiny timeframe for them to be turned in. It was only a small delay, not like 15 minutes or something really weird.

If the fight result is overturned and Khan is reinstated as the IBF and WBA champion, it’s going to make Khan look really bad, like not only a sore loser but a fake champion in the minds of many boxing fans. It’s nice that Golden Boy is trying to get him a rematch but the whole thing is going to turn the knowledgeable boxing fans off towards Khan.

The thing is Khan really doesn’t even need the two titles back because he’s about move up in weight to the welterweight division anyway, so it’s kind of pointless to have his promotional team working their hard in trying to overturn the results with an expensive appeal. So what if Khan gets the titles back after all that money was dumped into the IBF and WBA’s hands for the appeal, he won’t be perceived as a champion. I wouldn’t even bother.

You know and I know that Peterson will volunteer to fight Khan again, so he doesn’t need to force the guy or have his titles stripped from him to try and invalidate the judges who gave Peterson the win. Boxing fans can see for themselves that Khan performed poorly, had no answers for Peterson’s inside game, looked panicky, fouled constantly and ran like mad throughout the fight.

Khan looked like a sloppy amateur with poor coordination in that fight. You can have the results overturned I’m sure, since the sanctioning bodies are persuadable organizations but it won’t undo how awful Khan looked in that fight. That’s on him and his trainer Freddie Roach for that performance.