By Eric Thomas: The International Boxing Federation ruled on Tuesday that newly crowned IBF bantamweight champion Abner Mares has by December 14th to give a rematch to Joseph Agbeko, who Mares defeated by a controversial 12 round majority decision last Saturday night in Showtime’s bantamweight tourney.

Although few boxing fans would disagree that Mares appeared to be the better fighter in that bout, what blew it for Mares was his constant fouling of Agbeko by throwing low blows.

The referee Russell Mora failed to penalize Mares despite the fact that he was fouling in almost every round of the fight by landing low blows.

After the bout, Agbeko and his team were furious with Mora in how he worked the fight and said they would take it to the IBF to try and get an immediate rematch.

The IBF ruled that Agbeko had indeed been hit low quite a few times and that referee Mora had failed to act. As things are now, Mares has until December 14th to make a fight with Agbeko or it will go to purse bids.

Having to fight Agbeko a second time is going to be difficult for Mares, because more and more he seems to have a serious problem in keeping his punches above the belt.

A big part of Mares’ game is body punching and if he’s not able to do that for fear of losing points or getting penalized, he’s not going to be nearly as effective as before.

You can bet that the next referee that works the Mares-Agbeko fight will be watching Mares like a hawk and if Mares makes the mistake of throwing low, he’s going to get a warning and then likely points taken away.

There probably isn’t going to be a referee that will want to risk becoming another example of letting Mares get away with obsessive fouling. But the real question is how will Mares fight if he’s unable to throw to the body as much?

I’ve seen a number of his fights, including his recent win over Vic Darchinyan, and noticed that Mares lands a high number of low blows in a lot of his fights.

He hasn’t been getting called for them other than losing one point in the Darchinyan fight, but if he starts losing points over and over again and/or getting disqualified, he’s going to have to rethink his game and come up with a new strategy to try and win.