By Dan Ambrose: I must say that heavyweight contender Tomasz Adamek (48-2, 29 KO’s) has been quite lucky in 2012 with his very controversial decision wins over Eddie Chambers and Steve Cunningham. Those two fights along with former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios’s win over Richard Abril has got to the worst decisions in 2012 among well-known fighters.
Rios (31-0-1, 23 KO’s) was given a split decision over Abril on April 14th of this year at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight, seen by thousands of people, was completely dominated by Abril for the entire 12 rounds of the fight. Rios fought well enough to deserve maybe two rounds at the most, as he was getting with clean pinpoint shots from the Cuban Abril throughout the fight and was like watching Floyd Mayweather Jr. pick apart a limited Ricky Hatton.
At the end of the fight, the judges gave Rios the decision by the scores of 116-112 and 115-113, while the third judge had it scored overwhelmingly in Abril’s favor by the score of 117-111. That’s the only judge of the three that appeared to have been watching the fight because the other two had scores that looked like they were watching a completely different fight from the one that boxing fans saw on that night.
Even a 116-112, 115-113 scores for Abril would have been far too close because he only gave up 2 rounds on my card while the rest of the rounds were completely one-sided to the point where I felt embarrassed for Rios. After the fight Rios came up with the excuse that he had struggled to make weight.
Fair enough, but he still shouldn’t have been given the decision because he got totally dominated. Not surprisingly, Rios’s promoter at Top Rank chose not to put him back in with Abril to try and clear up the controversy.
Adamek beat Eddie Chambers by a 12 round unanimous decision in June of this year in a fight that Chambers looked to have won by a minimum of four rounds. What was especially disappointing about this fight was that not only did the judge’s score the fight for the guy that appeared lose badly they gave him the wide scores of 116-112, 116-112 and 119-109. The last score was just incredible because that judges gave Chambers next to no credit for his total domination of Adamek.
Last Saturday night, Adamek beat Steve Cunningham by a 12 round split decision by the scores of 115-113, 116-112, with the third judge giving it to Cunningham by a 115-113 score. Very few boxing fans saw Adamek winning this fight, and it’s a decision that has really upset the boxing world because of how off it was to what happened in the actual fight.
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