By William Mackay: Right about now I can imagine Golden Boy Promotions head honchos are drowning their sorrows in misery after their golden goose former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) lost by a 12 round split decision to challenger Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) at the Convention Center in Washington, DC.
In the height of arrogance by Khan, he wanted to fight Peterson in his home town rather than in a neutral venue like Las Vegas or New York. The crowd applause seemed to really help gather the energy for Peterson during times where Khan was starting to do well and pull away. The fight outcome was incredibly close going into the 12th, but Khan made the mistake of pushing Peterson after having been warned by the referee before the round started, which cost him a point deduction at a terrible time. Earlier in the fight, Khan also lost a point for giving Peterson a shove in the 7th.
Both point deductions were well deserved, as Khan got away with an awful lot of fouling tonight. While Peterson was fighting a squeaky clean fight, Khan was using a variety of illegal tactics to try and get an advantage such as holding, shoving down on Peterson’s head, putting him in constant headlocks and giving him hard shoves when he was coming inside to fight. Truth be told, the referee probably could have taken off even more points and he’d have been in the right.
Khan didn’t know how to make adjustments in the heat of the battle and gave away a lot of rounds that he may have been able to win if he could have made adjustments on his own instead of waiting until the rounds ended. You could see how his trainer Freddie Roach was helping Khan a lot by giving him great advice in between rounds, which Khan to his credit was superb at following. The difference here is that Peterson was making adjustments to Roach’s instructions and Khan was left still following the outdated plan.
The better part of the second half of the fight saw Khan running constantly and looking tired. It was like watching a replay of Khan’s fight against Marcos Maidana. Like in that fight, Khan started off with an incredible amount of nervous energy in the first two rounds in which he showed some amazing hand speed. But Khan couldn’t keep up the pace and when Peterson started to time him and land hard shots in the 3rd and 4th, Khan, following Roach’s instructions, abandoned trying to slug with Peterson and started running.
Peterson really did an impressive job of quickly cutting off the ring to force Khan to fight in the second half. Khan’s running gave Peterson problems in 6th and 7th. However, Peterson’s trainer had him almost running after Khan and Peterson was able to neutralize Khan’s movement with that new tactic. It’s a credit to Peterson that he was athletic enough to catch up to Khan so easily because a lot of fighters would have had trouble cutting off the ring with Khan galloping around in circles like a horse that wanted no part of the action.
With this loss it’s going to be all but impossible for Golden Boy Promotions to justify a Khan-Mayweather fight in 2012. Oscar De La Hoya had been talking about wanting to match Khan against Mayweather in May of next year, but he can forget that. De La Hoya also can forget about Khan being the No.1 Pound for Pound fighter in boxing, which was another of De La Hoya’s misguided dreams. I suppose he could have tried to make a case for that to happen if he had continued to match Khan against soft opposition but it would have made De La Hoya look silly if all they wanted to do is match Khan against beatable fighters.
Comments are closed.