That quote belongs to Showtime commentator Al Bernstein. Its subject is Nevada referee Russell Mora. Bernstein made the comment between rounds 11 and 12, when a replay showed Mora had called a lowblow a clean punch � a mistake he�d made numerous times during a championship fight he officiated and Showtime televised.
Bernstein is not known for hyperbole; if anything he leans too far towards equanimity.
Immediately after the fight Showtime personality Jim Gray � yes, that Jim Gray � began his postfight interviews with Russell Mora instead of the match�s winner or vanquished champion. Gray indicated to Mora that Mora changed the very result of the match. Strong words indeed.
What Showtime�s talent said about Mora�s performance is worth treating, but first some details. The match was Mexico�s Abner Mares against Ghana�s Joseph King Kong Agbeko. It was the final of Showtime�s short but delayed Bantamweight Tournament. It was also for the IBF title, which belonged to Agbeko. Mares won by majority decision scores of 113-113, 115-111 and 115-111.
My scorecard concurred. I had it 115-113 for Mares. I gave the Mexican rounds 1, 3, 6, 7 and 11. I had the Ghanaian winning rounds 2, 4, 8, 10 and 12. I had rounds 5 and 9 even. And with Russell Mora�s help, rounds 1 and 11 went to Mares by two points, 10-8.
There were two knockdowns that were not actually. Mares benefitted from both. Does that make Mares a rotten kid or second-tier fighter who is only competitive at the championship level when it�s two-against-one? Not at all. It just makes the result of Saturday�s match sufficiently wrong to be disregarded by aficionados, and such disregard is punishment enough.
It�s what will happen to Referee Mora, fear not. Boxing has never been a very large community. Today it is a tiny and shrinking one. With the help of modern communication tools, it is a community capable of suffocating state commissions into complying with its will. This sort of thing can turn to bullying but generally hasn�t in boxing. Of course Texas� Gale Van Hoy � about whose future judging efforts some fans still want email alerts � might disagree.
Don�t hold Mora against Mares. The young Mexican bantamweight earned that first knockdown by looking better in his opening two minutes against Agbeko than anyone has. Mares was sharp and tight. Agbeko was wild and unbalanced. When Agbeko planted to throw an odd-angled punch and his feet splayed, it wasn�t on account of anything Mares did in that preceding instant. But you know what? Mares had done enough in the preceding 120 instants to make a knockdown seem plausible.
Russell Mora was not looking at the combatants� feet. He wasn�t much looking at their gloves either. His eyes were on the combatants� heads. These are likely his mechanics; he watches the heads � where most action happens � and relies on peripheral vision and feel (as a former Golden Gloves state champion) to take care of the rest.
These mechanics explain why, time and again Saturday, Mora�s primary concern was Agbeko�s pressing on the back of Mares� neck, not where Mares� left fist went. The Showtime crew, meanwhile, sat well beneath the action and saw each lowblow as if thrown in slow motion. Welcome to perspective.
Mares is not necessarily a dirty fighter. He is a fighter who commits to throwing lots of left hooks to the body. And if you throw lots of those punches at a moving target, you land lowblows.
How? Because the left hook to the body is not a punch thrown on a flat plane. In order to find an opponent�s liver, many things must go right at the moment of impact. Along with your opponent�s breathing rhythm being on inhale, the knuckles of your left hand must be rising. You can do this one of two ways: 1. Throw a flat punch with an upwards twist at the end, or 2. Throw an uppercut-hook hybrid that begins low and ends high.
Mares chooses the latter option. He starts many of his left hooks low and relies on an opponent to stay still at least until the punch is above the belt line. Mares does not seem to realize this: His postfight justification for lowblows � that his opponent often moves away � was exactly backwards.
The fight�s most offensive punch, the cherrypicker Mares threw in round 11 � a punch that dramatically improved the fast-fading Mexican�s fortunes � was an act of miscalculation. Mares started the punch too low and too close. He wanted to throw an uppercut to the forward-bent Agbeko�s abdomen. Mares missed his target by about 10 inches. We know this because the top of Agbeko�s glove was at the belt line, and Mares� glove landed beneath the bottom of Agbeko�s glove, way below its intended target. Mares deserved a one-point penalty, one he would have agreed with later.
Referee Mora, eyes fixated on the fighters� heads, blew the call � awarding Mares an extra point when Agbeko took a knee, rather than deducting one. This caused a four-point swing in round 11. In missing an important call, Mora directly altered a championship fight�s outcome. He�s not fit to referee another major fight for some time. That�s sanction enough.
How to otherwise remedy the injustice done Agbeko? That part�s simple.
Showtime, by virtue of its tournament, is the de facto promoter of the bantamweight division. Mares and Agbeko, two fighters who owe what exposure they�ve had to the network � their promoters, after all, couldn�t fill a nightclub at Hard Rock Hotel � will do what Showtime tells them to. Instead of lobbying the IBF or writing protest letters to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Agbeko�s people need only send Showtime a tape of its on-air talent.
The credibility of Showtime�s tournament has been compromised. Showtime will remedy this by ordering an immediate rematch.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
Source: Bart Barry/www.15rounds.com
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