Artur Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) and Dmitry Bivol (23-1, 12 KOs)) put on a great show for the spectators last Saturday in a fight that made the former the undisputed light heavyweight champion, something not seen since Roy Jones Jr. However, the result, a majority decision (114-114, 115-113, 116-112) in favor of Beterbiev, still failed to convince many.
The fight was fairly close and Bivol was very sharp in the first half of the fight. The fighter who defeated Canelo moved well, showed strong defense and threw the clearest and most telling punches. However, the pressure from his opponent was constant, although without being as effective as he would have liked. The Russian-Canadian, who until then had a full career record of KOs, was even disgruntled with his performance after stepping out of the ring despite taking the big prize.
“Of course it was a tough fight. Dmitry is a world champion and has better skills than me. I didn’t do well today, I didn’t like this fight. It was not easy, it was a bit awkward,” said Beterbiev, who is in favor of a rematch: “If His Excellency (Turki Alshikh) wants it, we will do it.” The aforementioned Alshikh came out so enthusiastic that he said it was “one of the best fights of the last 20 years,” although he expressed that he was not at all happy with the scores.
Interestingly, Bivol said he simply accepted the result and preferred to look forward. In any case, his representative has announced that he will file a formal complaint against the judge of the bout Pawel Kardyni, who awarded a 116-112 in favor of Beterbiev.
Bivol’s representative Vadim Kornilov has come down hard and even speaks of a conspiracy: “I think the judge has to bear at least some kind of responsibility for what he did. It’s becoming very destructive for boxing what they are doing. These [sanctioning bodies] have supervisors, the supervisors are friends with the judges, they are seen hugging the promoters, it’s starting to look like a conspiracy.
“One of the supervisors was touching the Top Rank men and congratulating them before the decision was announced. What is this all about, what kind of chummy relationship do they have there, where is the professionalism in the sport?”
All this, which unfortunately is part of boxing, reminds us for example of the result of Sandor Martin vs. Teofimo Lopez, whose decision was not only ill-advised, but it took much longer than usual and there was some cronyism with the corner of the eventual winner. But there have been many great fights in the last decades that have been splashed with controversy due to their scores and here we highlight some of them.
The first fight that comes to mind is Hagler vs. Leonard (it was won by ‘Sugar’ by split decision and ‘Marvelous’ did not want to know anything about boxing after that result); then came the first two fights of Canelo vs. Golovkin. We also included Josh Taylor’s fight against Jack Catterall, because nobody gave a dime for the challenger and for many he should have been proclaimed undisputed champion. Do you remember ‘Maravilla’ against Cintron? Not only his controversial scores, but how in the seventh round Cintron didn’t get up from the count until the referee reached 10 and let him continue. Lennox Lewis still remembers today how the last referee scored it 115-113 for Holyfield and they tied the fight. Both he and Manny Steward were talking about a robbery.
Some of the most controversial decisions of the last decades:
- Marvin Hagler vs Ray Leonard
- Vasyl Lomachenko vs Devin Haney
- Canelo Alvarez vs Gennady Golovkin 1
- Julio César Chavez- Meldrick Taylor
- Floyd Mayweather – José Luis Castillo 1
- Pernell Whitaker – Julio César Chavez
- Manny Pacquiao – Tim Bradley
- Josh Taylor – Jack Catterall
- Lennox Lewis – Evander Holyfield 1
- Antonio Margarito – Miguel Cotto 1
- Sergio Martinez – Kermit Cintron
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