By William Mackay: It’s almost academic at this point that IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) will be facing Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) in a rematch in three to five months time given the World Boxing Association’s decision to force Peterson to give Khan an immediate rematch in the next six months.

Khan’s promoters went through the trouble of filing a big money appeal, something that poorer guys can’t afford to do, and the WBA responded by ordering the rematch. The IBF is expected to come back with a similar order for Peterson. It’s doubtful that Peterson will get a better offer than Khan in the meantime, so we can probably expect a rematch to happening very soon.

I think a rematch is a great idea, and I’m sure that Peterson feels the same way. After all, he’ll get a second shot against Khan and will really help himself to shut up Khan and his fans, who have bellowing constantly about the referee Joe Cooper who had the audacity of taking two points away from Khan for his shoving fouls. Even though shoving is considered a foul and Khan had been repeatedly warned to stop shoving Peterson, Khan’s fans and Khan himself feel that he should have been able to shove without losing points.

If a rematch takes place it will likely be in Las Vegas, Nevada, with a new set of judges and new referee. But the concern for Peterson is whether the referee that is brought in to work the Khan-Peterson II rematch will do anything to stop Khan from shoving Peterson all night long if he decides to fight the way. If you watch Khan’s past fights in the last year, you’ll notice that he frequently shoves his opponent’s really hard to create space and to get out of having to fight on the inside against them. Shoving is a foul and should be penalized if the fighter isn’t able to stop doing this.

Besides the shoving that Khan likes to do, he also has a nasty habit of grabbing his opponents by the head and pulling down on it to get them bent over. He usually then leans hard and cranks down to keep them there until referee separates the wrestling move and gives Khan a fresh start on the outside. That’s a fouling move that benefits Khan because it enables him to escape inside pressure.

If it was an occasional thing, it wouldn’t be an issue. But Khan uses this move all the time when dealing with pressure and it’s something that a referee should be controlling if they’re doing their job correctly. Letting one fighter bend another one into a pretzel just because they can’t fight on the inside is wrong. It’s cheating. If you don’t have the skills, you shouldn’t cheat. You’re supposed to learn and improve.

It’s like a test and bringing cheat notes with you because you didn’t study hard enough. If Khan is failing to learn how to fight on the inside, then he shouldn’t be allowed to cheat simply because he can throw fast punches and has an exciting style. That’s nice but you can’t give the guy an extra advantage on top of that by looking the other way every time he shoves an opponent or grabs them by the head twists pulls them face down towards the canvas. That’s just wrong to me.