This Byrd not scoring points for gender equality

Dear Adalaide Byrd

My better half is no sports fan, but she’ll occasionally watch rugby or boxing. I suspect it’s because there’s a good chance some blood will be spilled but I don’t question the reason. It’s just nice to have her company when I watch a sports event on TV.

We woke up early on Sunday morning to watch the Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez fight, mainly to see if the pre-event hype was justified but also because we both suffer from insomnia. GGG, as Golovkin is known, holds more world titles than many of our pol- iticians have brain cells but the feeling among many of the experts was that flame-haired Alvarez would give him a go.

I covered a bit of boxing in my days as a junior reporter on one of South Africa’s daily newspapers and, scoring as an impartial observer who didn’t really give a damn who won, I gave the fight to GGG by a two-point margin.

Even my better half, who knows as much about boxing as I do about the workings of the female mind, was adamant GGG had done more than enough for the win. “The redhead didn’t throw enough punches and he was always back-pedalling,” she said.

Guy Hawthorne

So when the judges’ scorecards were read out, both my better half and I wondered whether we hadn’t inadvertently switched over to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Your fellow judges scored the fight close, as I thought it was, with one giving it to GGG 115-113 and the other making it a draw at 114-114. Your score – 118-110 to Alvarez – was ridicu- lous in the extreme.

My better half, who is a modern woman and a staunch advocate for equal rights for the fairer sex, looked at me as if I had just eaten the last slice of banana bread (I had, but that was the night before and is beside the point). “What the hell?” she spluttered. “The only woman judge out of the three and she scores the fight like that. No wonder there are men out there who reckon we belong in the kitchen.”

I understand you are the wife of Robert Byrd, a highly-respected judge who won a deserved spot in boxing’s Hall of Fame. I don’t for a second want to suggest the fact you got the fight had anything to do with nepotism, but I really can’t believe you were selected for your ability to impartially call a contest. Also, I see Sunday’s fight was the 442nd of your career. If you scored the other 441 like you did the weekend’s fight, how the hell did you last in the sport?

Bob Bennett, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, to whom you are affiliated, jumped to your defence and called you an “outstanding” judge. He and a few others said boxing judges sometimes had “off days”.

Springbok coach Allister Coetzee is hoping they are right...