Khan: Peterson has 48 hours to agree to a rematch or I move on

By Boxing News - 02/03/2012 - Comments

Image: Khan: Peterson has 48 hours to agree to a rematch or I move onBy William Mackay: Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) is giving IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) only “48” more hours to agree to a rematch or else Khan will move up in weight and look for another fighter to get in the ring with, according to fightnews.com.

Khan and Golden Boy Promotions have offered Peterson a 50-50 deal in terms of the purse split in addition to half of the UK television money. It’s definitely a great deal, and Peterson has shown interest recently in taking the rematch. However, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum recently offered Peterson a fight against Juan Manuel Marquez for April 14th at the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, with a chance to fight WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao if Peterson is able to get past Marquez.

The offer from Arum has a much bigger end than what Peterson will get for the Khan rematch. The Marquez fight won’t likely bring Peterson as much money as he would make against Khan, but he would have the chance of getting a fight with Pacquiao if Peterson can beat Marquez in April.
Khan points out in the fightnews article that Peterson will get the chance of making a lot more money in the rematch with him than he will in the Marquez fight.

It might be difficult for Peterson to beat Khan because unless there’s a referee that will prevent Khan from shoving him and holding his head down all night, Peterson will have a difficult time trying to get his punches off on the inside. Khan doesn’t have an inside game and wasn’t able to stand his ground against Peterson because he couldn’t handle Peterson’s hard shots. For this reason, Khan used a lot of shoving and grabbing of Peterson’s head to pull him forward to where he couldn’t fight.

If Khan is able to get away with these kinds of fouls in the rematch, then it will be tough on Peterson. There’s also Khan’s running. He does a lot of running around the ring and even runs backwards to escape pressure. That’s legal, of course, but he’ll have to chase him down like last time while dealing with Khan’s shoving and other fouls. It’ll take a good referee to keep Khan from using these fouls and it’s likely that a referee will be appointed that is more of a hands off type for the rematch and that’ll put Peterson in tough position to try and win unless he comes up with his own fouling tricks to even the score.

It’s not exactly wise of Khan to be giving Peterson deadlines like this. Khan’s father, Shah Khan, already gave Peterson a one week deadline, which was promptly ignored by him. And now Khan is coming up with a 48-hour deadline. Seems kind of childish if you ask me. It’s like getting dumped by your girl and then you keep telling her she’s a week to change her mind. I don’t think Peterson will change his mind, especially with these laughable deadlines being presented to him. He’s probably thinking how much better off he’ll be not having deal with Khan and the hassle he went through after their recent fight.



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