By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA World light heavyweight champion Gabriel Campillo’s appeal to the IBF to have an immediate rematch against International Boxing Federation (IBF) light heavyweight champion Tavoris Cloud (24-0, 19 KO’s) was denied by the IBF on Monday. Campillo, 33, lost by a 12 round split decision to Cloud last month on February 18th by the scores 115-111 for Capillo, and 116-110 and 114-112 for Cloud.

The decision wasn’t a popular one with boxing fans, many of which saw Campillo (21-4-1, 8 KO’s) decisively beating Cloud. However, two of the judges working the fight Texas based fight disagreed that Campillo had done enough and instead went with the champion Cloud.

According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, the IBF reviewed the fight on DVD and didn’t see a case where the judges had done judged the fight incorrectly. IBF president said “Judging of professional boxing events is subjective.”

He’s right, of course. It subjective and I completely agree with their decision to give Cloud the victory, because Campillo didn’t do enough in the fight to take the title and he finished on a bad note by getting dominated in the 11th and 12th rounds of the fight. Normally, a challenger has to finish strong by controlling the last two rounds, but that’s not what happened here. Campillo was playing keep away in the last two rounds and was getting badly outworked. He fought like he was the champion instead of the challenger and that doesn’t work in boxing.

Campillo got off to an awful start in the fight getting knocked down two times in the opening round. Although he started coming on in the 2nd, Cloud was able to continue to win rounds just on his steady work rate alone. Campillo fought in spurts and wasn’t able to keep throwing the punches he needed to in order to take the title from the champion. Campillo fought well, just not well enough to get the decision. He should use the fight as a tool to improve his game because it’s right there in front of him what he did wrong in the fight.

Campillo reportedly has also appealed to the Texas State Athletic Commission to have the two judges who scored the fight against him face disciplinary action. There has been no verdict on that as of yet, but you’d have to assume that it’s long shot for them to discipline the two judges off of this fight.