By Gerardo Granados: Last week the WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman traded tweets with TV AZTECA Boxing Analyst Don Eduardo Lamazon, in which they argued about the fight that took place last July 11th between Mariana Juarez and Vanesa Taborda; originally the winner was Juarez by split decision, but the WBC with the approval of the local boxing commission reviewed the bout and then changed the result to a No Contest, and ordered a direct rematch and also suspended for two months the supervisor and two of the fight judges.
Don Lamazon is against changing any ruling because he believes chaos could brake lose if it is implemented, he stated on his Facebook account the reason of why he believes such thing. On the other corner WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman twitted: “we are in a new era and justice will be a priority for the WBC”.
I think it is a great idea to regulate special cases in which the rules could allow a fighter to dispute the result of a fight when it resulted evident for the audience, the local commission and sanctioning body that the scoring was not correct. Idem: the Tyson Cave vs Oscar Escandon bout (sanctioned for the WBA interim super bantam strap) which ended in a heinous robbery that deprived Cave from the deserving victory.
There are fights that are really hard to score but there are others in which the local fighter often gets favored, and there are a few fights that even the most novice fight fan can tell when there has been a wrong scoring.
The victim of a controversial decision should be able to request a review of the bout if there was enough evidence for the need to change the ruling. But never on close competitive bouts only on clear robberies or highly controversial decisions, such as when Tim Bradley vs. Manny Pacquiao I fight; that time the WBO studied the ruling but was not able to modify it.
Lamazon makes valid points and he states that to change the rulings would be worse than a bad ruling; that the medicine would be worse than the disease. But I don’t agree because you cannot get stuck in the past you must move forward and find a way to improve the rules.
By being able to modify a bad scoring on “specific regulated cases” it could also bring the possibility to penalize the judges who clearly gave a wrong scoring, suspension from duties and to have to attend training to correct flaws.
If there is something the WBC or any other major boxing organization can do to improve pro boxing then we should at least listen to the idea and try to make it work in the benefit of fighters. Do the readers think that Cave would not agree that the idea should at least be studied and at least to try to find a way to make it work? I wonder if any of the active or retired boxers think this is such a bad idea or if they would support a pilot program.
I am in favor, but what about the reader; do you think it should be possible to modify the fight judge rulings?
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