After nearly two months of repeatedly talks that included accusations of in-decorum from one camp following their championship fight, Amir Khan and Lamont Peterson will fight a rematch on May 19 in Las Vegas.
The Briton boxer was granted his desire for a rematch after his controversial loss to the American last December.
Lamont Peterson of the United States won the World Boxing Association (WBA) and International Boxing Federation (IBF) light-welterweight titles after beating Khan in controversial fashion, back in 2011.
Amir Khan filed an appeal against the results, citing concerns about points’ deductions by the referee, but ultimately dropped his claim.
The Pakistani-origin Briton boxer announced the fight on Twitter. He observed, “At last I got the fight I deserve.”
The pair will fight for a second time at Las Vegas’s Mandalay Bay Hotel after their first match took place in Peterson’s hometown of Washington, DC (District Columbia).
Richard Schaefer, chief executive of Khan’s promoter Golden Boy, told media, “We have a deal, we are all set. This is going to be a big, and I mean a very big fight. The first fight was a terrific fight, an all-action fight, a lot of controversy, a lot of questions surrounding it so this one here is hopefully going to clear up all these question marks.”
The WBA ordered a rematch earlier this month, claiming there were “multiple irregularities” in the first fight, and giving Peterson 180 days to agree terms with Khan for a new fight.
Amir Khan was initially unhappy with referee Joseph Cooper for deducting two points for pushing, and the way he judged the competition.
In the days after the bout, Khan also used his Twitter account to ask a series of questions about a mystery man, who was seen at ringside talking to Michael Welsh, the WBA scoring supervisor, during the match.
The mysterious man was subsequently named as Mustafa Ameen who attended the fight as a guest of the IBF but had no official role that evening.
Ameen while speaking to a British TV channel rebuffed the charges, saying he was only correcting mistakes and that Welsh was complaining of feeling poorly.