Boxing: another outrageous draw

It was “one of the most thrilling fights” Las Vegas had seen in years, said Ron Lewis in The Times. In one corner, defending his world middleweight title, was Kazakh boxer Gennady Golovkin, pound for pound the second-best fighter in the world; in the other, Mexico’s Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez. Álvarez spent most of the fight on the back foot, “concentrating his attacks into bursts”, while Golovkin landed 49 more punches than his opponent. Indeed, it took “a heroic effort” from the Mexican just to reach the final bell. Yet, despite the “overwhelming public view that Golovkin had won”, the fight was declared a draw – one of the judges awarded it to the Kazakh but another, Adalaide Byrd, inexplicably deemed Álvarez to have won 118-110. Golovkin had “every reason to feel that he had been robbed”. This kind of “travesty” is becoming all too familiar in boxing, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail: a “phoney” draw, which leads to an unnecessary rematch. No one doubts that the fight itself was genuine, yet something still “reeks”. Álvarez is “bigger box office” than Golovkin, so it’s bad for business if he’s “stamped second-best”. But this “comedy verdict” can’t be put down to corruption, said Steve Bunce in The Independent. It was “stupidity”, pure and simple. Fortunately, Byrd has now been stood down from major fights indefinitely; if there’s any justice, she’ll be banned outright.

Yet she isn’t the only incompetent official: in one recent world title fight, a judge “scored for the wrong fighter, confusing the blue corner with the red corner”. The problem is at its worst in Las Vegas, said Lewis. The city hosts many of the biggest fights – yet rather than picking the best judges, Nevada appoints officials from within the state. That has to change: one “bad day” for a judge can ruin a boxer’s career.