By William Mackay: Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) feels that he wasn’t given a good turn by the judges and referee in his loss to Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) last December in a 12 round split decision loss in Peterson’s home city of Washington, DC. After Khan’s powerful promoters from Golden Boy Promotions put in an expensive appeal to both the IBF and WBA, Khan was finally able to get a rematch against Peterson on May 19th at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Khan told thesun.co.uk “The eyes of the world will be watching our rematch and everyone will have to make sure that everything goes on in the fight will to be super clean.”

Khan, of course, is likely talking about the referee not taking points away from him for things like shoving, which cost Khan two points last time out against Peterson when he was docked a point in the 7th and 12th rounds. Khan shoved over 60 times in the fight and maybe that’s a low number and it seems rather high to me given that shoving isn’t supposed to be allowed in the sport. If you have a taller fighter like Khan that’s allowed to shove his shorter opponents, it puts him in a pretty good position to win the fight if the referee is paralyzed not knowing what to do. The wise thing would be for him to warn Khan to cut it out and then take away points if he continues to use this foul. But this kind of thing rarely happens in boxing and it’s now pretty much accepted that one fighter can get away with shoving no matter how often he does, as long as he’s not shoving a guy into the canvas.

Khan didn’t see his shoving as a foul and also felt he should have gotten credit for a knockdown of Peterson last December where Peterson tripped over the leg of referee Joe Cooper. Not sure why Khan saw that as a knockdown when it was clear on replay that Peterson had tripped.