Feigenbutz vs. De Carolis: Should the fight results be overturned?

By Boxing News - 01/10/2016 - Comments

feigenbutz7By Scott Gilfoid: If you watched last Saturday’s fight between interim WBA super middleweight champion Vincent Feigenbutz (21-2, 19 KOs) and #14 WBA Giovanni De Carolis (24-6, 12 KOs), you will have noticed that the final fight sequence was marred by De Carolis nailing Feigenbutz with a right hand to the back of his head and badly hurting him.

The shot badly hurt Feigenbutz, causing him to stagger forward and turn his back on De Carolis. At this point, De Carolis tagged Feigenbutz with another big punch to the back of the head that sent him staggering into the ropes. De Carolis then bombarded Feigenbutz with a small flurry of unanswered punches until referee Gustavo Padilla stopped the fight at 0:32 of the 11th round in their fight at the Baden Arena in Offenburg, Germany.

Not surprisingly, Feigenbutz’s promoters at Sauerland Events were not happy with the way the fight was halted, because they seemed to be upset with the punch that De Carolis landed to the back of Feigenbutz’s head. I can’t blame them at all because De Carolis clearly hit Feigenbutz with a looping right hand that landed to the back of his head to hurt him. That was the initial punch. After that, De Carolis had Feigenbutz where he wanted him and he just unloaded with shots until the fight was halted.

I think speak for a lot of boxing fans by saying that I think the World Boxing Association needs to review the Feigenbutz-De Carolis fight and overturn the results and make it a no contest rather than an 11th round knockout victory. It would be the fair thing to do in order to make sure that Feigenbutz wasn’t beaten by a punch that should have resulted in De Carolis being docked a point by the referee Padilla.

Getting brained by a rabbit shot had to have been a pretty devastating experience for Feigenbutz because he was still staggering around the ring after the referee quickly waived the fight off. What I don’t understand is why the referee didn’t step in and stop the action once De Carolis started nailing Feigenbutz with rabbit shots left and right.

If I had been the referee, I would have stopped the action, taken 2 points off from De Carolis for the two clear rabbit punches he landed that hurt Feigenbutz in the 11th round. I then would have given Feigenbutz five minutes to attempt to recover from the blows. I think he deserved at least that amount of time to recover from the illegal blows. The point deduction would have been valid because the blows that hurt Feigenbutz were clearly shots to the back of the head.

If the WBA doesn’t want to overturn the results of the Feigenbutz vs. De Carolis right, then they need to at least order a rematch, because the ending is too controversial due to the rabbit shots that De Carolis landed. The fight was basically even at the time that De Carolis brained Feigenbutz with a textbook rabbit shot in the 11th. Feigenbutz was fighting De Carolis at an even score and he could have won the fight if he had taken the 11th and 12th rounds. I’m just saying.



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