By William Mackay: If you saw Amir Khan’s fights against Marcos Maidana, Zab Judah and Lamont Peterson, you’ll have no doubt noticed that Khan tends to use a variety of fouls at certain times to gain a slight advantage over his opponents.

The fouls aren’t what you would consider major fouls, but they’re significant enough for Khan to gain an edge.

Khan has several fouls that he uses and they are as follows:

Shoving
pulling down on his opponent’s head
holding and hitting
putting them in head locks.

The holding and hitting isn’t used nearly as much as the pulling down on the heads of opponents and shoving. However, being held down while getting clobbered is never a good thing. Judah was taken out by Khan in the 5th round past year in July when Khan held him down with his left arm and tagged him with a right on the belt line to get a KO. The referee missed it completely and scored it as a knockout instead of a foul.

On July 14th, Khan will be challenging WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (23-0, 14 KO’s) for his title at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The question here is whether Khan will fight a clean fight or if he’ll resort to fouling like he’s done off and on in the past. In Khan’s last bout against Lamont Peterson, Khan used a lot of shoving and pulling down on Peterson’s head to try and defeat his excellent inside pressure. The referee didn’t go for Khan’s shoving, which Khan used to create space (i.e., to keep Peterson from fighting in close). With Khan shoving Peterson back all night long, the referee finally started taking points off and ultimately took two points off from Khan for the shoving. However, the referee gave Khan a huge break by letting him pull down on Peterson’s head without taking any points away and nor did he penalize Khan for putting Peterson in headlocks.

I’m just wondering if the referee will let Khan shove, hold and hit, pull down on Garcia’s head and put him in headlocks all night long without trying to stop Khan. Believe me, having those tools in the toolbox is obviously a big plus for Khan if the referee isn’t going to keep him from using them.