?It?s been years and years of the same garbage, the same trash. I?ve been in this business for 40 years. Where am I going to go? I got nowhere to go??
Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1, 31 KOs), the knockout artist from Los Angeles by way of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, defended his middleweight belts by fighting lineal middleweight champion Saul ?Canelo? Alvarez (49-1-2, 36 KOs), the freckle-faced wrecking ball from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, to an unsatisfactory draw after 12 eventful rounds.
The judges outdid themselves again. Dave Moretti had it 115-113 for Golovkin. No argument there. Don Trella had it a draw at 114 apiece. That was acceptable, if inaccurate. But Adalaide Byrd, the so-called Queen of Controversy, spoiled a perfectly good fight by having Canelo ahead by an unfathomable 118-110 margin.
The fight was close but not that close. The momentum changed hands several times. Canelo fought well. He took the first three rounds. He looked good. He outboxed Golovkin. He was landing counters. Triple G by contrast looked clueless and clumsy.
It did not last.
Canelo watched his punches bounce off Golovkin with no apparent effect. Size matters, especially in boxing, and this fight reaffirmed that salient truth. The Kazakh Kid took control in the fourth. The fight peaked in the championship rounds, as great fights often do, and the two men fought like real champions.
?I thought I won the fight,? said a dispirited Canelo. ?I think I was superior inside the ring. I won at least seven or eight rounds. I was able to counterpunch, and even make Gennady wobble a couple times. It?s up to the people if we fight again. I feel frustrated over this draw.?
He?s not the only one. ?This is terrible for the sport, for boxing,? said Golovkin. ?I?m a champion. This is the biggest fight for boxing ? This is terrible. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.?
Canelo is one lucky redhead to have gotten that draw. I have a hard time finding the seven or eight rounds Canelo says he won. He was also, sin of sins, unimpressed with Golovkin?s power. ?No, truthfully, not really,? said Canelo. ?He has power. It?s a different power than others I faced. But he?s also not the monster that everybody was talking about. There wasn?t any power that surprised me.?
Adalaide Byrd?s power resides in her ability to properly judge a fight. Her reasons for ruling as she did will be revealed in the days and weeks to come. The same will be true of her reckoning. She needs a remedial course in how to judge a fight. She needs to explain why she gave only two of 12 rounds to Golovkin.
Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Bob Bennett agrees.
?She has to articulate why she scored each round as she did,? he said. ?She was off her mark. We?ll go over the fight and by and large we train very hard here to prepare for the fight. Unfortunately she has had a bad night. Adalaide, in my estimation, is an outstanding judge.?
If there?s truth in numbers, Bennett is correct.
?She?s done over 115 title fights and/or elimination bouts. She does a great deal of our training. Takes a lot of our judges under her wing. I think being a judge is a very challenging position. I?m not making any excuses. But look at her record over the last three years, the worst that you are going to find are maybe a couple of rounds [that were off]. I have confidence in her.?
Bob Bennett?s confidence is more consequential than my lack of confidence.
?Unfortunately,? he added sympathetically, ?Adalaide was a little wide. I?m not making any excuses. I think she?s an outstanding judge, and in any business, sometimes you have a bad day.
?She saw the fight differently. It happens.?
Others are less sanguine. ESPN?s Teddy Atlas, for example, has launched a crusade against corruption in boxing. After witnessing Saturday?s C.J. Ross-type post-fight fiasco, when the word ?robbery? was used and not lightly, Atlas gave an impassioned assessment of what going to hell in a handbasket must be like.
?It?s been years and years of the same garbage, the same trash. I?ve been in this business for 40 years, a life. Where am I going to go? I got nowhere to go. But if I did?I?d get the hell out of it. GET THE HELL OUT OF IT! I?m sick and tired of watching these fighters that put everything on the line. They get in the ring; they come out of the ring with less of themselves physically than they had when they came in. And this gets done to them by a bunch of cowards.?
Cowards to the right of me, cowards to the left, I want to be in a foxhole with Teddy Atlas.
And as far as Adalaide Byrd is concerned, thank you for your service, and for ruining an otherwise perfectly fine evening.
