Peterson: Khan has a lot of things to change in his game and not much time to change them

By William Mackay: IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO’s) feels his game is about ready for his rematch against Amir Khan (26-2, 18 KO’s) on May 19th at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.


Peterson already knows what he needs to work on for this fight and doesn’t feel he needs to tweak his game much in order to beat Khan for a second time. He knows what Khan does after beating him by a 12 round decision last December, and doesn’t figure Khan will be able to make major changes in his game in such a short period of time.


Peterson told RingTV “The sooner that we got into was the better for me. From the way that I look at the fight, there’s not too much that I need to change. I felt that he was uncomfortable, so I feel as if there are a few more things that he needs to change. I think he needs time to change it so with less time, he has less time to change those things.”

Peterson is right. Khan looked really uncomfortable against him last December and couldn’t handle his inside pressure or even his outside pressure. Khan looked like he was having a nervous breakdown and was resorting to pushing off in an amateurish fashion and manhandling Peterson’s head with headlocks and pulling down on it. The referee took points off for the shoving but really needed to take off points for all the times Khan kept grabbing him by the head.

Khan doesn’t honestly believe he lost the fight and seems to be under the impression that he deserved a clear win, even going so far as to say that he deserved to get two knockdowns in the fight instead of just one. As far as I could tell, Khan deserved to get exactly no knockdowns. The knockdown he got credit for was from a perfectly placed elbow that nudged an off balance Peterson to the canvas. I guess it all happened too quick for the referee to see Khan hitting Peterson with his elbow instead of a punch.