BOXING referee Tony Pesons, who acted as the third man in the outrageous fight between Asia-Pacific bantamweight champion AJ Banal and challenger Tyson Cave of Canada in Lapulapu City two weeks ago, is like a punching bag now receiving verbal wallops from boxing observers and experts who feel that he displayed total incompetence in officiating the Wold Boxing Organization (WBO) title bout.
Indeed, Pesons, who is a very likable fellow up close, may have lost control of the fight which saw Banal and Cave engaged in a cat and mouse game punctuated by low blows from both sides and ended in the 8th on the recommendation of the ring doctor who deemed that the cut suffered by Banal in the early rounds had become very serious.
Banal won the fight by technical decision, Cave earned the ire of the crowd while Pesons ended up being ridiculed and pummeled left and right for his very poor officiating.
But the blame should not be Peson?s entirely.
Except for a few who have continuously trained, studied and honed their skills in refereeing, like Bruce McTavish, most of our boxing referees, and judges too, learned officiating inside the ring by simply just watching other referees do it.
There has never a school for referees, nay a crash course perhaps, to prepare the prospective Third Man before he is given an assignment in the ring.
More often than not, most of the boxing referees are former boxers who could not say goodbye to the sport. The only saving grace of Philippine boxing now is the appearance of a young lawyer, Daprex Tapdasan, who I believe is one of the most learned among the referees that we have now.
The absence of a training program to produce competent ring officials, boxing referees specifically, is one of the problems besetting Philippine boxing today. The others would be the absence of good trainers, physical conditioners and cornermen.
