Peterson: Khan always pushes; He always pulls people’s heads down

By William Mackay: IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) is amused by the excuses Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) has been making for his constant shoving and pulling down on Peterson’s head in their December fight last year in which Khan puts the blame squarely on Peterson by saying he had to shove him away because he kept coming in with his head. Khan says he wanted to avoid getting head-butted.

Peterson answered back in an interview at the BBC saying “You can watch any Amir Khan fight; he pushes all the time. But I was coming to him more often than other people, so he pushed a little more. But he always does it. He always pushes. He always pulls people’s heads down. I have no history of head-butting anyone or head-charging anyone.”

Peterson is right, of course. He doesn’t have a history of charging opponents with his head and he doesn’t have a reputation of head-butting his opponents. What we saw in the Khan-Peterson fight was Peterson merely coming forward trying to work on the inside and Khan seemed to be stressing out from the pressure. He wasn’t getting really worked in close and not doing a good job dealing with Peterson’s body shots.

Khan did a lot of shoving in the Peterson fight and perhaps did even more pulling down on his head. Being yanked forward constantly caused Peterson’s back to tighten up, and the referee should have probably taken off points for that move in addition to the two points he took off for Khan pushing, because it was being done far too much in the fight.

The May 19th Khan-Peterson 2 rematch could very well come down to whether Khan is allowed to push, pull down on Peterson’s head and put him headlocks without the referee getting in his way to warn him or take points off.