By Scott Gilfoid: Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan and Golden Boy promotions did the smart thing by giving up on their appeal to the International Boxing Federation because I think it would have gone nowhere. Khan is much better off groveling for a rematch instead of trying to force it. The 50-50 offer is a good start at doing that. They might want to sweeten the offer a little by agreeing to the rematch taking place in Washington, DC. That’s how you get the Peterson rematch. Khan needs to realize he’s not the champion anymore.

The WBA caved immediately and gave Khan an immediate rematch against Lamont Peterson even without hearing, but the IBF was going to look at the claims that Khan and Golden Boy had made about the fouling, the judges, scorecards, the so-called missed knockdown and the mystery man and it didn’t like they were going to buy the excuses.

Golden Boy’s press release stated that they were withdrawing their appeal because there was only going to be partial representation of the officials who worked the fight. Referee Joe Cooper and WBA supervisor Michael Welsh weren’t going to be at the meeting, and those two were going to be used by Khan and Golden Boy to win the appeal. They felt that the referee should have counted a 2nd round knockdown where Peterson tripped over the referee’s foot. I really don’t know why Golden Boy and Khan included that as one of the issues up appeal because it was seen by everyone that Peterson tripped.

As for the point deductions for Khan shoving, the IBF would have sat through and watched the fight like rest of us did and seen Khan shove Peterson over and over again, while at the same time ignoring the referee’s attempts to get him to stop punching. The IBF would have no doubt agreed with the two separate one point deductions taken away from Khan and wouldn’t have had any problems with the referee Cooper in doing his job to control the foul-prone Khan.

Of the complaints that Khan had, the only one that you can sort of understand is the mystery man sitting with the WBA supervisor. That obviously shouldn’t have happened but the mystery guy didn’t pull out a pen and start changing any of the scorecards and he wasn’t the one in the ring running around and fouling. That was Khan, not mystery man.

At the end of the day, Khan and Golden Boy were smart to give up the appeal. All it would done is create more negative press. It was all a waste of time, including the WBA appeal. When you get beat like Khan did, you got to accept it and not cry. Khan made his loss twice as bad by moaning about and by initiating the appeals. What a waste of money.