Few referees have turned in a performance as bad as that which Laurence Cole blessed us with Saturday night in, inevitably, San Antonio, Texas for Vasyl Lomachenko?s much hyped shot at Orlando Salido. Dan Kelley, perhaps. Russell Mora, definitely. But there are not many.
For those of you who have somehow missed out on this story, Orlando Salido was able to shade Vasyl Lomachenko who underwhelmed with his performance but was nonetheless hampered by a quite astonishingly bad performance by the man who, lest we forget, is there to protect the fighters from serious harm first and foremost. That congenitally stupid men like Cole are allowed anywhere near a boxing ring is the harshest indictment possible of any oversight committee of any description connected with the sport and not only should this ridiculous excuse for a referee be sacked forthwith but the role of his father plays in allegedly consistently obtaining for him some of the biggest fights in Texas in his role with the Texan commission needs to be investigated.
If you are in any doubt at all where the standard of Cole?s performance is concerned, please watch and ?enjoy? the below video, brought to you by Kappa Conviction Productions, which is a ?highlights? package of the thirty low blows that Salido landed on Lomachenko ? many of them in full view of the referee. Not all the highlighted low blows are, in fact, low, but at a rate of just less than three around, many of them are. The thirty-first appears to land on Lomachenko?s knee.
Keep in mind whilst watching it that the approximate ten clinches Lomachenko initiated in each of the twelve rounds are not a part of the highlights package, but they could be. Cole failed, in his apparent total ignorance of the rules of the sport of boxing, to enforce rules on clinching, pushing or blows below the belt.
He fails, entirely, at being a referee.
Probably coming to a big fight near you soon, but only if you live in the now perennial boxing joke that is Texas.
