By William Mackay: Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan and his promoter Golden Boy Promotions have withdrawn their appeal to the International Boxing Federation to have the fight result of Khan’s loss to Lamont Peterson overturned or an immediate ordered.
According to a press release sent out, not all of the fight officials that worked the Khan-Peterson fight last December 10th could be available for the IBF appeal hearing tomorrow. Instead of meeting with only a partial crew of officials, which likely would have left things kind of incomplete, Golden Boy and Khan decided to drop the appeal and instead try to arrange the rematch with Peterson straightaway.
The WBA has already ordered an immediate rematch between Khan and Peterson, and the IBF title likely isn’t as important now because Khan would have a chance to win that back in a fight with Peterson anyway, making the IBF appeal hearing was kind of irrelevant.
The only good thing that could have come out of the IBF meeting was if they ruled the fight a no contest, which would give Khan his IBF title back. I don’t think Khan wanted to get his belt back that way, and it would look tainted if that happened. He’s much better off waiting to see if he can try and win it back in a fight with Peterson.
Khan and Golden Boy have decided to try and lure Peterson into giving a rematch by offering him a 50-50 split of the worldwide revenues, which include the UK pay per view money. That seems like a very good deal for Peterson to take. It’s a lot better than his original deal for the first fight.
The only thing that might get in the way of Peterson accepting that fight deal is if he gets picked by WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao for his next fight or if Juan Manuel Marquez and Peterson agree to fight. I don’t think a Marquez-Peterson will bring in the kind of money that a Khan-Peterson fight would take in. Peterson is much better off going for the rematch with Khan, as long as they can make sure a fair referee is working the fight.
It won’t be good if a referee is picked that doesn’t let Peterson work on the inside and who breaks the action every time Khan starts to get worked over on the inside. Also, the referee will need to do something about Khan’s pushing and pulling down on Peterson’s head. You can’t have Khan shoving Peterson around all night and using other kinds of fouling tactics to get an extra edge in the fight.
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