By William Mackay: Amir Khan feels he has a strong case to have the results of his 12 round split decision loss against Lamont Peterson overturned. Khan’s management team has appealed the decision and Khan is expecting to get his IBF and WBA titles back within the next week and a half. At the minimum, Khan is looking to have an immediate rematch ordered so that he doesn’t have to wait around while Peterson faces someone like WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley.
Khan lost a couple of points for fouling by referee Joe Cooper and he feels that he lost those points unjustly. Trying to prove that the referee was against him will be hard to show, however, because Khan got away with a lot more than two fouls in the fight. He was pushing off on Peterson all night long and it may have been a total into the 50s. The only argument that Khan and his team could make about the pushing off fouls not being deserved is that those kinds of fouls rarely happen nowadays.
But nonetheless they still are considered fouls and Khan clearly pushed off on both of the occasions that the referee took points in the 7th and 12th rounds. Khan really should consider himself lucky that the referee didn’t take points away from him for pushing down on Peterson’s head, because this foul was even more of a problem than Khan’s pushing off.
Frequently in the bout, Khan would reach for Peterson’s head with both hands and pull it forward and then press down on it while looking at the referee to see if he would do anything about. The referee never did do anything about this type of foul but he really needed to. Cooper did Peterson a disservice by not taking points away from Khan for the head grabbing and headlocks that he kept using on Peterson.
Khan says he’ll still give Peterson a rematch if the fight is overturned. I guess Khan said this to show what a good guy he is, because if the commission and/or sanctioning bodies give him a victory, he really wouldn’t be required to fight Peterson again and could then follow his original plan of moving up in weight to the welterweight division to chase Floyd Mayweather Jr. for a fight.
Comments are closed.