Amir needs to come home

The King is dead. Long live Havoc.

Khan had been building himself up towards the big fights, the mega money and superstardom. The plan was to challenge Floyd Mayweather Jr, perhaps after a full light-welterweight unification match with Tim Bradley.

In DC at the weekend that all went up in smoke. Instead, Khan must start again, as he did so well after his first defeat to Breidis Prescott three years ago.

In the wake of this result much is being made of referee Joseph Cooper’s decision to deduct a decisive two points from Khan. Undoubtedly there is some controversy here, although, in fairness, Cooper was only following the letter of the law.

Really, the refereeing hoo-ha is just a distraction, and it should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Khan simply did not deserve to win the fight. Admittedly a draw would probably have been the fairest outcome, but, if there was going to be a winner, it was Peterson.

When the fight really got going Peterson had Khan looking amateurish, unsure of himself and just plain worried. At times, most notably in the seventh round, but also the ninth and 11th, Khan was running away, backpedalling as fast as his feet could carry him, with Peterson breaking into a jog as he tried to catch up with the Bolton fighter. In these moments in particular Peterson looked like the champion and Khan a mere boy on the run.

It had all started so differently. Khan was the heavy favourite going in and for the opening two rounds it went off as expected. Khan’s hand-speed had Peterson mesmerised in the first, with the American twice tumbling to the canvas, one of these falls ruled a knockdown.

When Khan won the second round in similarly commanding fashion, it looked only a matter of time before Peterson succumbed to the fast-fisted Lancastrian.

But at the end of the second round Peterson’s trainer Barry Hunter, seeing the fight slipping away - and all their dreams with it - pulled out the motivational stops. His appeal was simple, timely, and homely:

“This is DC. This is home. Look around you!”

And, were you to look around, you would see that a capacity crowd of 9,000 had turned out. Big boxing crowds are rare in America, and not a single notable fight had been fought in DC since 2005, when Mike Tyson put an end to it all against Kevin McBride.

Nobody knew that Lamont Peterson could draw such a crowd but, then again, there is that saying in America: if you build it, they will come. Peterson had won an IBF eliminator to fight the rising star Amir Khan, and the fans turned out. They turned out to root, root, root for the home boy.

Those Washington fans must have bought into the Lamont Peterson story. Abandoned by their parents, Lamont and his brother Anthony had been homeless children on the streets of DC before crossing paths with Hunter. It was he who mentored the pair, steering them towards boxing. The rest, unfortunately for Khan, is history.

Things came to a head in the third round when Peterson became able to time his way away from Khan’s punches, or block them on his gloves, before bulling forward, exposing Khan’s inability to fight up-close. Khan fought back with heart and quickness, trying to keep it at distance, to keep the inspired Peterson at bay, and thus the pattern for the fight was set.

It must have been around that third round that Khan realised his mistake of taking the fight to Washington, and giving Peterson the advantage of a partisan crowd.

Unlike Khan’s previous US adventures, this fight was not held before the jaded glare of the Vegas high-rollers, nor the detached eye of the Square Garden aficionados; this one was held in the authentic America, before a patriotic swell in the capital.

When the going got tough, the crowd got going. They needed only two syllables to rally their man. “DC, DC,” went the clarion call.

Peterson heard that call, and answered it fulsomely. For brief snatches towards the end the home-town fighter looked close to physical collapse, as much through existential fatigue as punishment from Khan, but his will was too strong to allow his body to relent.

As champion, Khan could expect home advantage. Indeed, had the fight been held in Bolton, London or Manchester then the Englishman would surely have triumphed.

However, Khan had had his head turned by Golden Boy Promotions, and by the idea that he could be the next Manny Pacquiao, an overseas fighter embraced by mainstream America, with all the dollars that comes with it.

Sadly for Amir, Pacquiao is very much the exception to the rule and the reality is that the Bolton fighter may never be embraced in America, simply because his name is Khan.

In pursuing the Yankee dollar, Amir has neglected his natural fan-base back in the UK. His tremendous fight against Marcos Maidana was on pay-per-view at 4am our time, and he then took his talents to the inferior Primetime channel for disappointing contests against Paul McCloskey and Zab Judah at nearly £15 each.

If the UK fans have turned off Khan, he has only himself to blame - and it is no surprise that nowhere near the numbers travel to America to follow him as they once did Ricky Hatton.

'Havoc' Peterson showed Khan what an advantage the home crowd can be. For one night, and perhaps one night only, the Washington street-child became a human embodiment of the American dream. On that night the fans simply would not allow him to lose, even though Khan would have won easily had he stayed behind his jab and occasional flashes of combination punching.

What now for Khan? He owes a great deal to Freddie Roach, but Khan continually defies his trainer’s call for a safety-first approach. Amir got away with it against the limited Maidana but not Peterson, a much slicker opponent. If Khan wants to fight rather than box then he needs a trainer who will develop his inside game, and maybe just maybe, Roach is not that man.

Above all, though, regardless of who trains him, or where, Khan should come home and fight in his own back garden. Ricky Hatton may not have beaten Kostya Tszyu anywhere other than the MEN Arena, and Peterson may not have beaten Khan anywhere other than DC. Such is the power of the home crowd.

It was a terrible decision for Khan to face Peterson in DC because a champion should only travel to his challenger’s hometown when the money is spectacular, and it surely wasn’t for Khan on Saturday night.

Of course, Khan is now no longer a champion, but he needs to ground himself back home before taking on the world again. It is a great irony that Khan went to America to make more money because, by losing to Peterson in Washington, he has lost the chance to fight ‘Money’ Mayweather and to make the obscene piles of cash thus entailed.

Aged 25, Khan still time on his side but as a fighter who is so reliant on speed he may not stay a world-level operator much past his 30th birthday. A rematch with Peterson is expected, and Khan should be able to win that if he stays disciplined. All the same, the recent talk of a pound-for-pound ranking now seems hopelessly premature.

At the moment Khan doesn’t seem to know if he is a cautious boxer or a fan-friendly brawler. Whilst that confusion remains it is hard to see him scaling the highest of heights.

Khan rebuilt from his first defeat by leaving home for America, but perhaps now, to recover from his second defeat, he must come home and rediscover who he really is as a fighter.