By Allan Fox: Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn believes Jack Catterall’s controversial 12 round split decision loss to undisputed light welterweight champion Josh Taylor in Glasgow cost him “Millions,” and he’s “Never” get another opportunity like this to battle a four-belt champ. The judges scored it 114-111, 113-112 for Taylor, and 113-112 for Catterall.
This was an opportunity for Catterall, 26, to make life-changing money that would have set him up for life if he’d won. Unfortunately, he came out on the losing end of a controversial decision against the home fighter Taylor (19-0, 13 KOs).
Hearn says he would like a rematch to be ordered to give Catterall a second chance, but that doesn’t seem likely to happen.
In the post-fight press conference, Taylor stated that he sees no reason to give Catterall (26-1, 13 KOs) a rematch because he won the fight as far as he’s concerned.
Taylor says he plans to move up to 147 and go after the marquee fights against Terence Crawford, Errol Spence Jr., and the like.
The British Boxing Board of Control will investigate the results of the Taylor-Catterall fight, but that doesn’t guarantee that a rematch will occur.
If Taylor chooses to vacate his four belts, which he has already made clear that he’ll be doing, there won’t be a second fight.
Hearn: Catterall lost out on MILLIONS
“I only turned it on in the fifth round because I was following it on social media, and everyone was saying, ‘four-nil to Catterall.’ So, I turned it on and watched the rest of the fight,” Eddie Hearn said to Matchroom Boxing last Saturday night in reacting to Jack Catterall’s controversial loss to undisputed light welterweight champion Josh Taylor.
“Jack Catterall should be the undisputed champion,” continued Hearn. “I was watching that fight going into the tenth, eleventh round, thinking, ‘I can’t believe Jack Catterall from Chorley in Lancashire is about to become the undisputed 140-lb champion.’
“You can say, ‘Yeah, he’ll get another chance,’ but he’ll never get another chance like that. He’ll never get another chance to be undisputed, and he’ll never get another chance to turn a few hundred thousand [dollars] into a few million and to create a legacy that’ll be remembered forever. It’s over with, it’s done, but we need to learn from it and move on,” Hearn said.
Judges need to be accountable
“People need to be accountable to the poor job that they’ve done, and 114-111, particularly, is impossible, really,” Hearn continued. “So why? Why did you score it like that? In the past, the Board has spoken to their officials, but they always want to defend and justify them. Maybe it’s time for that to change?
“Hopefully, a rematch is ordered because he [Catterall] deserves to wake up this morning as the undisputed champion. It’s quite nice that I’m not getting the blame for it, but it happens all over the world every night.
“Sometimes judging a fight is an opinion, but you can’t get it wrong where everyone in the world had Jack Catterall winning, apart from the three people that mattered at ringside. That doesn’t make sense.
“It’s not just the British Boxing Board of Control. It’s hard. [Top Rank president] Todd duBoef had to do it last night. He had to speak, and he probably thought Josh Taylor lost but had to sort of justify the decision. We don’t need to justify the decision. We just need answers and change as long as there is some kind of change and learning process.
“But it still doesn’t take away from the fact that Jack Catterall got robbed last Saturday night with an opportunity to change his life in a moment that he should remember forever,” said Hearn.
Too many fans believe Catterall deserved the victory, and it’s challenging to understand Taylor’s hardened stance about not giving him a rematch.
Even if a rematch is ordered, Taylor likely won’t agree to it because he says he wants to move up to 147 and go after the more prominent names.
Catterall won the fight says, Hearn
“Even from the fifth round to the end of the fight, I had Catterall winning the fight,” said Hearn in reacting to the results of the Taylor-Catterall match last Saturday night.
“So obviously not taking the four rounds into consideration that everyone said Catterall won most of them, he clearly won the fight,” continued Hearn.
“I don’t really like criticizing the British Boxing Board of Control because they’ve got a tough job, and they do a good job.
“But where they probably let themselves down is they try to protect their officials a little too much. They do that because they care for them.
“But as Tony Bellew said, when a fighter has to go through what he goes through and at the end of the fight a microphone is put in front of his face, and he’s asked probing questions, I feel like we should at least hear from the officials and they should do the same.
“Whether that’s from the Board of Control or from the media, I don’t know, but you have to answer in any job if you perform badly and you make mistakes, you have to justify your position. I feel like that’s the same,” Hearn said.
From the judges’ perspective, it had to be difficult for them to score the Taylor-Catterall fight last Saturday night, as the pro-Taylor crowd in Glasgow were going mad each time he would land a punch.
Taylor’s Scottish fans were drowning out Catterall’s fans, making the fight seem like it was going in his favor.
If you were one of the three judges working the fight, it had to have been next to impossible to filter out that noise and concentrate on what was happening inside the ring.
Of course, an answer for this type of thing would be to put the judges in a soundproof location where they do not hear the sounds of the crowds and are influenced by them.
More importantly, there needs to be a way of evaluating their performances, grading them, and drumming them out of the sport if they’re not doing an optical job.
In any profession, you don’t last long if you’re making mistakes, upsetting the customers and employers.
Oddly, in judging, there doesn’t seem to be a correction process to weed out the judges that aren’t performing their jobs well and turning away fans from the sport.
Where is the next generation of judges?
“I also worry about the development of young judges coming into the sport,” Hearn said. “Since I’ve been promoting, a lot of those people scoring the fight last night have been judges and officials.
“They are good judges and officials, but where are the next generation of young judges and officials coming into the sport?
“The problem is it turns people off from the sport, and I don’t think that there’s anything untoward. People talk about corruption. Rubbish!
“But sometimes people perform badly, and the problem is that this is one of the few sports where a judge in that position can completely rip your heart out and ruin your dreams,” Hearn said.
It’s a good question Hearn asks about who the next generation of judges will take over for the group that has been judging fights for ages.
Ideally, there should be a way of filtering out judges quickly based on their scoring being evaluated by the British Board of Control, as they’re hurting the sport.
