By Marcus Richardson: The dream that Golden Boy Promotions had for their little golden goose former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a mouth-watering mega bout in 2012 may have gone up in smoke with Khan’s royal plucking by Lamont Peterson last night in Washington, DC. Peterson won the fight by a 12 round split decision over a constant fouling Khan.
Say what you want about the win being a questionable one, what’s not questionable is that Khan struggled against a guy that was pretty well handled by Timothy Bradley two years ago in a one-sided 12 round decision win. Golden Boy Promotions has said that Khan is a future super star, a future number #1 pound for pound star. Khan wasn’t supposed to struggle like this against a fighter like Peterson if he was truly worthy of all that bluster by his promotional company.
Khan went life and death with Peterson last night, and definitely didn’t look any better than him. I myself would have been okay with either fighter getting a close decision or even the fight being scored a draw. It was close. But for a fighter that that Golden Boy were grooming to put him in with Mayweather, this was a terrible setback. You can’t shield your eyes from what happened in the ring last night.
Khan was royally exposed as a fighter with not even the basic fundamentals of how to fight on the inside. What we saw instead was Khan yanking on the back of Peterson’s head and trying to shove his down to the canvas in an ugly, ugly manner. And along with this illegal tactic, Khan used headlocks, and pushing all night long to try and cover up the fact that he can’t fight on the inside.
The thing is you have to be able to fight on the inside to be a no #1 fighter in the sport, and Khan was exposed last night and lost. Ultimately, Khan had two points taken away from him for his pushing and those were well deserved point deductions. What Khan was doing was shoving Peterson when he would try and come inside, as if to say ‘Get away from me.’ It looked really amateurish and it stopped the action.
HBO didn’t understand the point deductions, and felt Khan should have been allowed to shove Peterson around the ring. I disagree. I think Khan should have lost points because his pushing has become a nasty habit that Khan has been given a lot of leeway with in important fights. You can’t have a fighter being allowed to break rules with impunity. It would be like a baseball player being allowed to throw spitballs because someone thought it wasn’t a big deal. It is a big deal when you’re the fighter trying to attack and you’re getting shoved all over the ring or having your head pulled forward when you get inside.
I don’t know what Golden Boy is going to do with their plucked golden goose now. Khan has been exposed, and yeah, I’m sure they badly want a rematch with a different referee and different venue. I can already guess who the referee will be for a Khan-Peterson II fight. I just hope Peterson doesn’t take the fight unless it’s to his liking because I see Khan fouling just like he did last time and getting away with it instead of being penalized.
As for a future Mayweather vs. Khan fight, you can pretty much forget that dream. A Mayweather-Khan fight is laughable now. If Khan can’t even beat Peterson, there’s no point of a Khan vs. Mayweather fight. Khan isn’t the dreamed for future star that Golden Boy thought he was, and they need to look at downsizing their hopes.
What was truly sad last night was how much of a poor sport Khan sounded like after the fight while being interviewed by HBO’s Larry Merchant. Khan couldn’t or wouldn’t give Peterson any credit whatsoever for his fine performance. Instead, all Khan could do was blabber about how he felt he was fighting two people in the ring last night – Peterson and the referee – because the referee had the nerve to tell Khan to stop pushing and pulling down on the back of Peterson’s head. Khan almost sounded like a big spoiled child, blaming his fouling on Peterson instead of taking responsibility for it.