By William Mackay: Although Freddie Roach and Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) are both saying they’ll fight IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) differently in the May 19th rematch, Peterson doubts Khan is capable of being any different than he was before. Peterson sees Khan as being stuck in his ways, incapable of changing in the rematch, and Peterson may be right.

Peterson said to the BBC Sport “He’ll do what he always does, he always fights the same. He’s either straight forward or straight back. That’s the way he fights. He’s not going to change it. The way the fight went the first time, I was pretty comfortable with it. I won the fight so I really don’t want to change anything.”

Peterson doesn’t need to change anything other than making sure to start pressuring Khan a lot earlier than he did last time. Peterson will need to be ready to jog after Khan the way he was jogging to catch up to Khan last December when Khan was looking like he was panicking, running all around the ring to try and escape Peterson’s pressure. When Khan’s running failed to do the trick to slow Peterson down, Khan then started pushing off on Peterson and pulling him by the head to get him bent over.

Some of Khan’s fans seem to be okay with Khan’s shoving, and don’t seem to care that he shoved over 50 times in the fight, leading to two point deductions. Besides the shoving and pulling down on the head, Khan also landed some nice forearms to the head while pushing off. Peterson later said that it wasn’t the pushing off that bothered him, it was Khan landing elbows and forearms while pushing off. Peterson had to eat the forearms in the face and he said that bothered him. Khan didn’t lose points for the forearms to the face, but the shoving eventually cost him with a couple of 1-point deductions.

If Khan does fight differently, it’ll be him staying off the ropes and looking to stay more or less in the center of the ring by doing wide loops around the ring all night long. It’ll be constant lateral movement interrupted by Khan grabbing Peterson by the head each time he gets close to try and land. Peterson will get a few punches off before Khan likely lassos his head and starts pulling down on him or putting him in a headlock for several seconds before the referee breaks up the action.