By Allan Fox: On Wednesday, the Nevada State Athletic Commission selected the three judges and referee for the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin II rematch on September 15 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The referee for the Canelo-GGG 2 fight is Benjy Esteves, according to Dan Rafael. The Nevada Commission was considering appointing Tony Weeks to work the fight, but Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler was against that appointment. Golden Boy Promotions didn’t object to Tony Weeks as the referee, according to Rafael. Weeks worked the controversial second fight between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev fight on June 17, 2017.
The fight ended in the 8th round after Ward appeared to hit Kovalev with three consecutive shots that some boxing fans felt were low blows. Many fans felt that Weeks blew it by failing to call the shots as low blows. It’s unclear why Loeffler objected to Weeks working the GGG vs. Canelo 2 fight on September 15. Some fans felt that Weeks was too lenient in failing to call Ward for throwing low blows.
The judges for the Canelo-Golovkin 2 fight are as follows:
– Dave Moretti
– Glenn Feldman
– Steve Weisfeld
Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy and Golovkin’s promoter Loeffler of K2 Promotions have no issues with those three, says Rafael.
Moretti worked the first Canelo-Golovkin fight last September and scored it for GGG by a 115-113 score. Moretti is seen by a lot of fans as the only judge that scored the fight correctly. The other two judges had it scored as follows: 114-114 and 118-110 for Canelo. The scores were very controversial. The judge that had I scored 114-114, Don Trella, gave Canelo round 7, which was seen by a lot of boxing fans as Golovkin’s best round of the fight.
As far as he referee goes, Loeffler was fine with either Robert Byrd or Benjy Esteves working the Canelo-GGG 2 fight. It ended up being Esteves. Byrd is the husband of Judge Adalaide Byrd, who scored the first Canelo-Golovkin fight 10 rounds to 2 in favor of Alvarez.
Golden Boy Promotions being able to negotiate the rematch in Las Vegas arguably puts Canelo in the driver’s seat ahead of Golovkin in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. Las Vegas is Canelo’s venue, and Golovkin is going to be the visiting fighter once again. Historically, the visiting fighter often winds up getting the short end of the stick. Hopefully, the fight is scored fairly and the boxing fans get their money’s worth. It would a shame if the Canelo vs. Golovkin 2 rematch ends in controversy like the first fight. That’s why Golovkin’s promoter Loeffler should have negotiated harder to get the rematch to take place in a neutral venue instead of taking the fight back to the same venue as the first fight.
The judges need to score the Canelo vs. Golovkin 2 rematch in a more logical manner than they did the first fight. That’s a given. The scoring for the first fight was too odd for the likes of many boxing fans, and it looked to a lot of them like Canelo was given a draw that he didn’t deserve. The rematch needs logical scoring that makes sense to the fans.
Kenny Bayless was initially going to be selected by the Nevada Commission to work the Canelo vs. Golovkin rematch, but he told Bob Bennett of the Nevada Commission that he couldn’t work the fight on September 15. Bayless worked the first fight, and there was some grumbling from GGG’s trainer that he failed to check Canelo for turning his back to Golovkin when he would throw body shots at him. Sanchez said that Golovkin stopped throwing body shots after receiving a warning from Bayless early on after GGG hit Canelo with a shot to the back. In replay, Canelo could be seen turning his back to Golovkin when he would throw to the body. Instead of Bayless warning Canelo to stop turning his flank to Golovkin when he would throw body shots, he warned Golovkin. Bennett wanted to use Tony Weeks as the replacement for Bayless, Loeffler rejected that idea. Loeffler and Golden Boy had no issues with Esteves being selected as the referee for the Golovkin-Canelo 2 rematch.
“We’re very pleased,” Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez said to ESPN.com. “They are the top guys with the most experience, and that is what we want. We have no issue with Benjy whatsoever. What we want [is for] everyone to be comfortable with the officials. We don’t want any controversy with the officials, and we don’t want any excuses after the fight, and I think we achieved that today.”
It’s a wise move for Gomez not to object to Esteves, because it was his fighter Canelo who was viewed as the loser in the first fight. It’s important that the second fight not be viewed with controversy like the first fight because there were a lot of unhappy boxing fans last time. The fans wanted to see scoring that made sense to them, and the last fight looked like it was scored in a bizarre way.
Canelo vs. Golovkin 2 will be televised on HBO pay-per-view at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT on September 15 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo is the underdog as of now. Canelo appears to have taken off a lot of muscle weight from his frame with the goal of improving his stamina over the previous fight. This move may ultimately backfire on Canelo because his size advantage over Golovkin last time was arguably the best thing that he had going for him in the fight aside from the questionable scoring. If Canelo, 5’8″, is too small and weak to match-up with the 5’10 1/2″ Golovkin, then it could turn out to be a rout in favor of the Kazakhstan fighter. Golovkin is made to order for going to war with his opponents, and he showed that he was the much better conditioned fighter of the two. Canelo was constantly fatigued last September, and unable to mix it up with Golovkin without taking prolonged rest breaks of two minutes.