By Marcus Richardson: Golden Boy Promotions highly hyped fighter IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan was exposed once again tonight in losing his straps to challenger Lamont Peterson by a well-deserved 12 round split decision in front of a huge crowd at the Convention Center in Washington, DC. The judges scored it 113-112, 113-112 for Peterson and 114-111 for Khan.
Initially, Khan fought well for the first two rounds, getting credit for a knockout he didn’t deserve in the 1st round after Peterson slipped to the canvas. The bout dramatically following the 2nd, however, as Khan suddenly started to tire and Peterson began to time him and land hard shots to the body and the head. Khan wasn’t looking so great at that point.
Khan’s trainer had him change tactics stating in 5th with Khan adopting the all out running strategy that he used against Marcos Maidana to squeak out a 12 round decision last year. Although it worked initially, you could see that Khan was going to run out of gas sooner or later because he was running for his life and looking god awful in doing so. I know Golden Boy thinks they have a real gem in Khan, a future pound for pound star, but he is so awful to watch when he’s running for his life. The only good thing about Khan in this fight was his hand speed. Other than that, he looked sloppy and amateurish to the extreme. Golden Boy might want to cut their losses or downgrade their expectations for this guy. It might take a lot of super careful matchmaking to build him back up.
Khan looked nothing like a future star of anything and certainly not someone who deserves a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. next year. What a nightmare that fight would have been.
At any rate, Khan was fouling at a consistent basis from the first round on using a lot of the same types of fouls that he was able to get away in fights against Maidana and Zab Judah. Specifically we’re talking about giving Peterson a hard shove when he was trying to work on the inside and then cranking down on his head to hammer him with a shot while he was defenseless. I mean these were all fouls that Khan got away with constantly against Maidana and against Judah, but tonight the referee was on his job and took points away from Khan on two separate occasions. I lost count of how many times Khan had Peterson wrapped in a wrestling headlock and was walking him around like WWE professional wrestler. It was all just stall tactics for Khan to try and shut down the offense of Peterson instead of fighting the guy and proving he was the better fighter. I know Khan and his fans feel he got robbed because of the two point deductions but what referee can allow that kind of constant fouling to go unchecked?
Some boxing fans may not have liked it but being able to shove your opponent the way that Khan does in order to avoid having to fight on the inside is completely illegal. Khan needs to learn how to fight on the inside or just learn to run more. But giving someone a hard shove that sends them flying two feet is not legal, and certainly neither is grabbing them with both arms around the back of the neck and pulling their head forward so that you can tag them the way that Khan often does. So I was all for Khan losing points and really I thought he got away with countless other fouls of those types that the referee chose not to take points away.
Khan started to wear down under the body attack from Peterson and the running that Khan was doing wasn’t helping him any. He was doing little more than landing one or two punches and then running. Every one in a while, he’d stop and throw an ugly flurry to try and impress the judges. It wasn’t fighting. It was all just a sham. Khan couldn’t stand and fight because Peterson was too strong for him and the only Khan could do is try and steal the rounds with his hit and run tactics. Peterson adapted in the 9th round after struggling with Khan’s running by doubling his own pursuit of Khan. As it turns out, this worked perfectly for Peterson because Khan couldn’t sprint fast enough to get away from Peterson and was forced to fight him more and more, and that didn’t work in Khan’s favor. Peterson began to really work Khan over with body and head shots. You could see that the body shots really bothered Khan because he was lowing his guard to try and protect his vulnerable body. This allowed Peterson to come up stairs and tag Khan to the head.
After the bout Khan was bitter about the defeat, blaming it in part on the referee for taking points away from him. But what do you expect? Khan has been given a lot of leeway with fouling in very important fights in the past year with shoving opponents and pulling down on their heads to clobber them. Had Judah and Maidana done these same tactics repeatedly against Khan, I imagine they would have done a lot better than they did. Khan needs to learn how to fight on the inside without fouling or else this kind of thing will be repeated.
In other action tonight:
Terron Grant KO 1 Dashawn Autry
Joshua Davis UD 4 Christopher Russell
Fernando Guerrero TKO 5 Robert Kliewer
Dusty Harrison TKO 1 Terrell Davis
Anthony Peterson UD 8 Daniel Attah
Jamie Kavanagh MD 6 Ramesis Gil
Seth Mitchell TKO 2 Timur Ibragimov