He was right to throw in towel, says McGuigan

BOXING legend Barry McGuigan believes Amir Khan took the ‘sensible option’ with his decision to throw in the towel against Terence Crawford. ‘He got out because he was down. He was losing the fight comprehensively. The sensible option is he saves himself for another day,’ said McGuigan, the former world featherweight champion. When asked why he thought Khan did not take the full five minutes to recover, McGuigan, 58, told BBC’s Sportsweek: ‘Well he could have. I don’t think that low blow was in the groin. I think it hit him on the top of the leg, not in the testicles. ‘That’s when you get the sick tummy and lasting pain. I don’t think it hit him in the testicles, it hit him on the side. ‘It’s a very dangerous thing to do to call somebody a quitter. You look at Khan’s career and the fights he’s been in and the one thing he always had was immense courage, determination and getting up off the floor. There’s no quit in him. ‘If he’d gone on and been humiliatingly knocked out and dropped several times and then flattened, then people would have been calling for him to stop.’ Former heavyweight world champion Frank Bruno believes Khan will continue to fight on. ‘It was very sad, to get punched on the centre wicket like that,’ Bruno, 57, said. ‘He could have taken the five minutes and recovered, that would have been better.’ If he fights on, Khan’s next opponent looks like being fellow Briton Kell Brook. Brook told AB Boxing News: ‘I thought he quit. He had five minutes. He just looked for a way out. He will wanna fight me now, he’s got nowhere to go.’