Only a few days after the controversy of Showtime?s bantamweight tournament finals, the International Boxing Federation (IBF) has ordered an immediate rematch between Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko. Unless you?ve been living under a rock since last Saturday, you either saw or have heard about the abysmal officiating of Russell Mora, who repeatedly allowed Golden Boy Promotion?s Abner Mares to hit his opponent below the belt over the entirety of the bout. To miss a few calls here and there is forgivable, but to blow the call like Mora did in the 11th round ? where Mares hit Agbeko right in the middle of the cup, yet was awarded with a knockdown ? is a classic example of how the 3rd man in the ring can directly affect the outcome of a close fight. What was quite possibly a 10-9 round for Agbeko suddenly became a 10-8 round for Mares, ultimately changing Jimmy Lennon?s post fight announcement from ?and still?? to ?and the new??
The silver lining in all of this is that the IBF saw what we the fans saw and did the right thing. Imagine that, a sanctioning body doing the right thing! Sounds insane, right? But this just goes to show that some of the alphabet boys are better than others, not all sanctioning bodies are created equal. And in this writer?s humble opinion, the IBF stands alone as the best of the major sanctioning organizations in professional boxing. I?m not saying they?re perfect, but they actually tend to follow their own rules while the rest seem to change them as they go. Here are some quick stats to show you what I mean.
