WBO rejects Hogan’s complaint over scoring for Munguia fight

By Boxing News - 04/26/2019 - Comments

Image: WBO rejects Hogan's complaint over scoring for Munguia fight

By Chris Williams: The WBO has rejected mandatory challenger Dennis Hogan’s complaint over the judges’ scoring of his fight against WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia (33-0, 26 KOs) earlier this month on April 13 at the Arena Monterrey, in Monterrey, Mexico.

The World Boxing Organization put together a panel of five independent judges from different countries to watch the replay of the Munguia vs. Hogan fight, and to score it themselves. The fight was originally scored in Munguia’s favor by the scores 115-113 [Rocky Young], 116-112 [Waleska Roldan] and 114-114 [Richard Levine]. All three of the judges are from the United States. The five judge panel that scored the fight for the WBO as part of their panel review, scored it for Munguia by an average of 115-113.

It’s easy to understand why the WBO’s panel of five scored it in Munguia’s favor. He was the more aggressive fighter in every round, doing the attacking, throwing most of the punches, and generally trying to win. Hogan was moving around, trying not to get hit, and just countering. It’s possible to win fights by throwing counter shots, but not when you’re being outworked and hit with the harder punches all night long by Munguia. Hogan fought well in the championship rounds after Munguia gassed out, but he’d given away a lot of the first six rounds.

In the key 12th round, Munguia fought aggressively and showed that he wanted it more. Hogan let Munguia do more than him in the 12th, and this put him in a bad place when it came to the scoring. Had Hogan taken the fight to Munguia in the twelfth, he might have had a chance of changing the outcome, but he didn’t do it.

Hogan’s complaint has been rejected by the WBO. What now needs to happen for Hogan to get a rematch is if Munguia’s co-promoters at Golden Boy Promotions or Zanfer Promotions decide they want to give him a second shot. Hogan’s trainer said after the fight that they were told that they would be given a rematch. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything if it’s not in writing. Manny Pacquiao recently appeared to agree to fight Errol Spence, but it wasn’t in writing. He just verbally said to him, “Why not?” when challenged by Spence after his win over Mikey Garcia last month on March 16. If Golden Boy and Zanfer are on board with giving Hogan a rematch, then it’ll happen. But it doesn’t look good for Hogan that the WBO has rejected his complaint.

Munguia has better options for interesting fights against the likes of Jessie Vargas or Kell Brook. Either one of those guys would be interesting options for Munguia. There’s also welterweights that would be good options if they willing to move up to 154 to take on Munguia. Danny Garcia would be a great choice. However, he’s with Premier Boxing Champions, and fights on Showtime. That makes it very unlikely he would get a shot at fighting Munguia on DAZN.