LAS VEGAS–When I get a story in my teeth, I have a tendency to work it over like a well-gnawed bone. I admit it. So it is with why Nevada fight judge Bert Clements did not score the first round of the first Juan Manuel Marquez-Manny Pacquiao bout, in which the Mexican visited the canvas thrice, by a 10-6 margin.
Clements? two colleagues, Guy Jutras of Montreal and John Stewart of Cherry Hill, N, did pencil in a four-point advanatge for the Pinoy idol after that wild round in that featherweight title match. But he called it 10-7 and the night wound up with the fight as a majority draw after Jutras favored Marquez 115-110, Stewart had Pacman by the same tally and Clements final total was a 113-113 push.
But the question has lingered without a true resolution, until now until the eve of the Pacquiao-Marquez II event, this time with Marquez?s 130-pound WBC crown at stake. The bottom line answer to whether Clements absolutely goofed up or whether he did not has been as cloudy as Ricardo Louis after his fourth martini on a Friday night at Dan Tana?s in West Hollywood.
But the Boxingconfidential Non-Defective Detective has cracked yet another cold case.
The answer, according to the man who was on the Nevada commission staff for 22 years and served ably as executive director for 14 years, Marc Ratner, is that Clements did make an honest mistake that historic evening.
The local rag, The Review-Journal, quoted Clements as saying after the bout ?that I screwed up? but whether he actually did was murky.
?I don?t want to knock Bert,? Ratner told me Thursday night from a UNLV basketball game where he was getting ready to officiate the Big West Conference game, ?but we had gone over it seminars with the judges. They had all been told you could score a multiple knockdown round as a 10-6 round. Look, the other two judges weren?t from Nevada but they knew it and they scored it 10-6. There was no three knockdown rule in the fight.
?There was no policy against that. I don?t know any reason Bert did not do it except that he was confused. But I really do not have a problem with the fight coming out a draw as Marquez came back strong, it was an extremely difficult fight to score and now look at the big rematch they?re having. The big rematch is predicated on the controversy from the outcome of the first bout.?
Clements was assigned as a judge for the Mayweather-Hatton bout and is still a top category judge in the state. Ratner is now an executive working for the UFC and has brought plenty of credibility to that organization specifically and to MM events in general.
Does Ratner think any judge should hestiate to call a round 10-6 when it is an opening round? Hould a judge put one fighter so far behind so early?
?The number of the round is not important,? Ratner said. ?Your job is come up with the right score for every round.?
Ratner was succeeded at NSAC by another smart guy, Keith Kizer. Kizer says that when a judge sees a round as even, 10-10, he or she should so score it. Ratner had an aversion to even rounds and he let Nevada judges and visiting judges know it over the years.
?In three minutes of boxing action,? Ratner said, ?I think you can find a winner 99 percent of the time.?
Nevada has had two top flight boxing administrators in a row. Some poor states never get any. Just another reason why boxing flourishes in Nevada.
I must mention here that both Ratner and I are Wolf Pack guys, proud graduates of the Harvard of Northern Nevada.
That?s University of Nevada, Reno, wise guy, and we?ve got another top basketball team this year.
Not like when I was in school and out sad hoopsters went about 3-26 two years in a row. Ah, for the days of coach Cactus Jack Spencer and Romie Thomas.
