By William Mackay Golden Boy Promotions is refusing to take the recent defeat of their up and coming star Amir Khan lying down, as seen by the big money Golden Boy is dumping into trying to get the result of Khan’s 12 round decision loss to Lamont Peterson overturned and ruled a win for Khan or a no contest.

In a conference call on Tuesday, Richard Schaefer, the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, revealed that they paid $10,000 to appeal Khan’s loss to the International Boxing Federation (IBF) and “little bit less money,” Schaefer said, to appeal the decision to the World Boxing Association (WBA). With that kind of money being handed to those sanctioning bodies for them to review the decision on the Khan-Peterson fight what do you think the odds are that they’re coming back with a decision that favors Khan or at the minimum erases the decision by ruling it a no contest?

I hate to say it but I think there’s a good chance that either one of these two organizations are going to overturn the results of the fight and likely change it to a no decision. I don’t know they’d be bold enough to change Khan’s loss to a victory but I wouldn’t put it past them either.

Schaefer’s argument to have the Khan-Peterson results overturned are centered around the scoring of the fight in which it took a little more time than it usually does for the judges to tabulate the scores. One judge changed his score for one of the rounds, which happens from time to when a judge makes a mistake, but Schaefer feels something wasn’t right with that. Schaefer had a number of other gripes about the scoring from the judges that seem like a lot of guess work on his part without any evidence of any wrongdoing, But by throwing up a lot of things he feels are suspicious to the sanctioning bodies he perhaps will get lucky with one of them resulting in the fight being overturned.

As for the point deductions taken away from Khan for pushing off in the 7th and 12th rounds, Schaefer says these weren’t fouls despite the referee Joe Cooper having warned Khan repeatedly to stop pushing. Schaefer says “There are no provisions in the rules related to pushing. In fact, the uniform rules of the Association of Boxing Commission do not mention pushing or even excessive pushing as a foul.”

As such, Schaefer feels that Khan should have been able to get away with his shoving Peterson all night long. If what Schaefer says is true, then boxing needs to clearly at pushing as a foul or at least keep fighters from doing it, because if you have a long-armed fighter like Khan that can basically shove his shorter opponents around the ring all night long, it gives him a big advantage in that he doesn’t have to ever figure out how to fight on the inside because he can simply shove his opponent away each time. If you looked at Peterson each time he was being shoved, he was getting thrown two feet back and was forced to regroup each time. If this isn’t a foul then boxing clearly needs to make it a foul because it’s an unfair advantage for the guy doing the pushing. Schaefer didn’t say anything about Khan’s other fouling in the fight where he as grabbing Peterson’s head and pulling it down all night long. I would hope that Schaefer wouldn’t try and say this isn’t a foul either.

Schaefer conveniently didn’t speak on Khan’s knockdown that he got credit for in the 1st round in which Khan never landed a punch and instead shoved Peterson to the canvas. So I guess it’s okay to not only get away with pushing off but also shoving an opponent to the canvas and getting credit for an undeserved knockdown.

I have a strong feeling the fight result will not only be overturned by one or both the IBF and WBA, but also an immediate rematch will be ordered, leaving Peterson no chance to squeeze in a fight in between. That’s so bad if it happens because if you’ve got a promoter willing to dump the kind of money that they’re putting into having the results of this fight overturned on appeal, it puts you in a good position to get decision losses overturned compared to fighters that don’t have that kind of backing from their promoter.

If Khan is able to push off and grab Peterson’s head all night long without being penalized or warned, I don’t see how Peterson can win in a rematch unless he knocks Khan out. All Khan has to do is run, shove, grab, and land enough quick combinations to get the win. It’s hard to beat a guy that’s shoving you around and yanking down on your head over and over again the way Khan was against Peterson.