Houston: What’s all the fuss?

By Graham Houston
Photo: WBC

What on earth was all the fuss about on HBO PPV Saturday night after the Chad Dawson-Bernard Hopkins fiasco, with Jim Lampley and Max Kellerman seemingly hinting at skulduggery on the part of the California commission? It was unfortunate that Hopkins hurt his shoulder and that Dawson became light-heavyweight champion on a tainted victory, but these things happen in the sometimes rough-and-tumble world of professional boxing. The referee’s ruling — Dawson winner by TKO — was, I believe, the correct one.

There is always going to be controversy over this sort of ending, but it’s not as if something like it has never happened before.

Something similar occurred in 1950 when Sandy Saddler won by TKO after seven rounds against bitter rival Willie Pep in a clash of featherweight greats.

Pep, who was in front on the scorecards, asserted that Saddler, who was admittedly a vicious infighter, had been guilty of roughhousing, wrenching Pep’s arm so violently in a clinch that the shoulder popped out.

The fighters had been wrestling and grappling in the seventh when Pep’s shoulder was hurt. Boxing historian Nat Fleischer felt that Saddler had Pep’s left arm pinned “and bent it backward” but referee Ruby Goldstein ruled that Pep had been accidentally injured. Maybe the referee felt that the boxers were equally guilty of borderline illegal tactics and that Pep was the one unlucky enough to come off worst.

More recently, Jeff Franklin was declared winner by TKO over Gabriel Ruelas in unsatisfactory circumstances in Las Vegas in 1990. Ruelas was dominating the fight but he suffered a broken right elbow and the bout was stopped in the seventh round. Ruelas’s trainer, Joe Goossen, felt that referee Richard Steele should have disqualified Franklin for yanking on Ruelas’s arm. “Franklin snapped Gabe’s arm,” Goossen told the Las Vegas Sun. “It was so intentional it was unbelievable.”

Referee Steele ruled, though, that Ruelas had been injured accidentally, and Franklin got the win by TKO.

This is really simple. If the referee rules that a fighter has been accidentally injured, and the fighter tells the referee he cannot continue, then the fighter loses by TKO — and veteran referee Pat Russell ruled that Hopkins had been accidentally injured.

The ending was unfortunate for those who paid to watch the bout on site in the Staples Center or ordered the PPV, it was very unfortunate for boxing, and it was unfortunate for Dawson because it looked to me as if he was bullying Hopkins and well on his way to victory. Hopkins had been doing his punch-and-rush-in tactics (and was cautioned in the first round for coming in a bit too enthusiastically with his head). In round two, Hopkins did it again, and Dawson seemed almost gently to shoulder Hopkins off him, but the ageing champion lost his balance and went sprawling on his back, immediately grimacing and indicating his left shoulder was compromised.

I thought I heard referee Russell telling Hopkins, or the champion’s corner, that the fight would be a TKO if Hopkins couldn’t continue.

There is more to it, though. HBO analyst Kellerman touched on it with his “boy who cried wolf” reference. Hopkins has a history of histrionics. Yes, Hopkins carried on fighting with a shoulder injury after Antwun Echols threw him to the canvas in their rematch in Las Vegas, and full marks to him for that. However, Hopkins’s dramatics in his fight with Joe Calzaghe and in the rematch with Roy Jones Jr. did not exactly win him acclaim. Hopkins collapsed theatrically from what looked a nothing-much low blow against Calzaghe and from what looked like a tap on the back of the head against Jones. Perhaps referee Russell thought Hopkins was using what Kellerman called “veteran” tactics. It was all a bit of a mess.

This was the second farcical finish to a fight involving Hopkins. I was ringside in Las Vegas when his bout with Robert Allen ended on a no contest ruling when Hopkins asserted he had hurt his ankle when he went through the ropes. Had Hopkins fallen out of the ring after, say, missing with a punch, he would have lost by TKO. However, referee Mills Lane, breaking up one of many clinches, pushed Hopkins a little too vigorously and it was this that caused Hopkins’s tumble out of the ring. In a case such as this, a “no contest” was the only sane ruling. It wasn’t the same thing at all as what happened last night in Los Angeles.

As for the commission not electing to make Pat Russell available for an interview, my suspicion is that they wished to sit down with the referee and go over everything with him in a calm way before any statements were made to the media. This is the British Boxing Board’s policy and it isn’t so terribly unusual. Max and Jim would take the view that they would just be giving the referee the chance to explain his ruling, but the commission might have sensed that one of their officials was about to get a public grilling in an emotion-charged atmosphere. The commission might have felt: “The crowd’s booing and chanting bullshit, feelings are running high, let’s let this thing cool down a bit.” I can’t blame them for taking this position.

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October 17th, 2011

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