By Radio Rahim

Promoter Eddie Hearn does not believe Amir Khan is a quitter, for what transpired during last Saturday's fight with WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Khan, who went down in the first, was trying his best to turn the tide against Crawford - but the fight was was called in the sixth round.

Khan was hit with a low blow, and then appeared to indicated to his corner that he was unable to continue any further and the contest was waved off.

There was a large outrage over the ending and many fans have labeled Khan as a quitter.

"Personally I think Khan is a brave fighter. Even before it got stopped he was going for it. He is always as he is, when he exchanges like that... he's always in danger. And he got put down heavy in the first round. He was getting hit very hard to the body throughout the fight. He wasn't always running around the ring, he wasn't on the backfoot trying to survive," Hearn told BoxingScene.com.

"He was lunging in and exchanging and I do feel like the position that he was in, he was not going to win the fight. Now, people like to see people get knocked out. And Amir Khan has had a tendency in the past to get knocked out. And people wanted to see if it would end like that, they wanted to see a real knockout, that's what they wanted to see.

"But I think Virgil Hunter made the decision, and I don't want to say save his fighter, but was he going to win the fight from the position he was in - I don't think so. The fans don't want you to pull out of the fight if you cant win anymore. They want you to go out there and get knocked out, that's their opinion. At the same time, when people say 'was he looking for a way out' - I don't know, but when he was in there he was going for it at all times.

"If he wanted to quit, he could have quit in the first round. He didn't have to get up, he didn't have to keep getting in his space to exchange. But he did keep trying to do that. He got one in the nuts, it was pretty low. Of course it hurt, I would have liked to see him get the five minutes [to recover], but I think Virgil decided. Fighters are so brave and sometimes a trainer has to pull them out and I think he saw from Amir that he had enough there.

"When you have pay-per-view you want to give people value for money. What happened last Saturday night, because it was pay-per-view, it escalates a 100 times. When it's an ESPN fight, you could just say it was a controversial fight. When you've paid $80, you are under pressure not just as a promoter and not just as a fighter. But when the people who paid the money and the people who paid for tickets in the area, they want to see him go out there to get knocked out."