Controversial calls that decided fights

This Sunday, the stadium that played host to Muhammad Ali-Leon Spinks II and Sugar Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran II will again be the site of a must-see championship rematch. At what is now known as the Caesars Superdome, this year’s Super Bowl brings back the same two teams that squared off in the game two years ago — two teams that have unfinished business.

You see, on February 12, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, according to the record books, the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles by a score of 38-35. But then again, the record books say Julio Cesar Chavez managed a draw against Pernell Whitaker, so … screw the record books.

Before we go any further: Yes, I’m biased as hell. I’m an Eagles fan. But I know what I saw. The Eagles came up with a third-down stop with 1:48 left on the clock and should have had that amount of time plus one timeout to attempt to produce a game-tying or winning drive. Instead, because of one referee’s decision to throw a flag in sharp contrast to the forgiving way the entire game had been called to that point, the Chiefs got a fresh set of downs and were ultimately able to hand the ball back to Philly with just 8 seconds remaining, no timeouts, and no hope of winning.

Was the call flat-out “wrong”? I won’t go that far. But it was, at the very least, highly controversial, and that controversial judgment call by a ref decided the outcome. With a different official assigned to that position that day, who knows? We could very well be talking about the Chiefs, not the Eagles, seeking to avenge a narrow defeat this Sunday.

So as the Super Bowl rematch approaches, my lingering bitterness got me thinking about similar situations in boxing — instances where a controversial call by a referee determined whose hand was raised.

To be clear, we’re talking only about referees here. If we included controversial calls by judges, Boxing Scene would run out of bandwidth midway through this article. So this is specific to referees (like that one who ruined the Super Bowl two years ago), and we’re focused on fights that would have, or at least very much could have, had a different outcome if not for that ref’s controversial call.

I’m breaking it down into four types of controversial referee decisions that have historically swung fights:

• Controversial stoppages

• Controversial disqualifications

• What I’m calling “the lopsided officiating pu pu platter”

But before I go through those categories, a comment on one category that isn’t making the list: noteworthy non-stoppages. The top two modern examples that spring to mind: Jack Reiss not stopping Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder I in the 12th round, allowing Fury to rise before the count of 10 and come away with a draw instead of a KO defeat; and Steve Smoger not stopping Kelly Pavlik-Jermain Taylor I when Pavlik was lurching all over the ring in the second round, ultimately turning what would have been a quick and seemingly conclusive middleweight title defense for Taylor into a changing of the guard.

Here’s why I’m not including that category: because they aren’t really controversial at all. When a ref doesn’t stop it, and the hurt fighter comes back to win (or get a draw), the ref made the correct call. Maybe what he did was out of the ordinary; maybe a majority of refs would have called a panicky halt instead. But “uncommon” is not the same as “controversial.”

OK, with that out of the way, on to the four main categories …

Like controversial decisions by judges, there are too many of these across boxing history to list. But I think we all can agree what the stand-out example is: Chavez vs. Meldrick Taylor, at the Hilton in Las Vegas on March 17, 1990.

Richard Steele’s decision to end this one with two seconds left on the clock is to stoppages what Leonard vs. Marvin Hagler was to decisions, in that decades later boxing fans are still fiercely debating who should have won. One thing is certain: If Steele (who was also the third man in Leonard-Hagler, incidentally) had chosen to let Taylor continue after he rose from Chavez’s 12th-round knockdown, Taylor would have won the fight. There was not enough time for Chavez to land another punch (though Steele didn’t know that for a fact), and though one scorecard was close, Taylor was up by five and seven points on the other two. Give Chavez his 10-8 round in the 12th, and Meldrick still prevails by split decision.

While there’s plenty of gray area surrounding whether Taylor was fit to continue and whether Steele’s call was correct, there is no gray area when it comes to the referee’s impact. His decision directly determined which fighter’s hand was raised. You couldn’t script a more controversial finish than that.

Once again, there’s a definitive number-one example here, a count so famous that, 98 years later, the simple name ascribed to the count endures. Gene Tunney successfully defended the heavyweight title against former champ Jack Dempsey in their September 22, 1927, rematch, a bout still recalled as “The Long Count Fight.”

Dempsey floored Tunney with a combination in the seventh round, but failed to follow the new rule requiring him to go to a neutral corner before referee Dave Barry could begin the count. Five seconds elapsed before the official count began. Tunney got up at the count of nine, having been on the canvas for 14 seconds. It’s plausible that he could have gotten up after nine seconds if he’d needed to, but he was locked in on Barry’s count and knew he didn’t need to rise yet. Fans will never know for sure if he could have, and after beating The Long Count, he got back to outboxing Dempsey and captured a unanimous decision.

James “Buster” Douglas’ upset over Mike Tyson for the heavyweight championship some 67 years later is a strong runner-up, as Douglas was on the mat for about 14 seconds after absorbing a hellacious Tyson uppercut late in the eighth round, but did beat ref Octavio Meyran’s slightly slow count.

And, though the magnitude was far lesser, Lou Savarese’s 1999 win over Lance “GOOFi” Whitaker is worth a mention, as Savarese dropped to a knee in round six and ref Smoger bizarrely paused between numbers to encourage him to get up. Savarese did, just inside the count of 10, and went on to win a split decision.

Controversial disqualifications

Probably the most famous DQ that turned a near-certain win into a loss was the one ref Tony Perez handed down against Roy Jones on March 21, 1997 in Atlantic City, but that doesn’t really qualify as controversial. The last punch with which Roy hit Montell Griffin was delivered so blatantly post-knockdown that Perez truly had no choice but to stick Jones with his first professional loss.

There are two more recent fights that come to mind, however, in which the trailing fighters prevailed via disqualifications that were nearly impossible to justify.

On June 28, 2008, junior lightweight contender Humberto Soto was battering Francisco Lorenzo and was on the verge of forcing a fourth-round stoppage, but as he scored his second knockdown of the round, a left hand grazed the back of Lorenzo’s head. The Dominican veteran complained of a rabbit punch, and ref Joe Cortez bought it and DQ’d Soto. How controversial was that call? The WBC, which had an interim strap on the line in the fight, elected not to award that belt to Lorenzo afterward.

Then there was the March 24, 2012 bout in Houston between 154-pounders James Kirkland and Carlos Molina. The underdog Molina was boxing effectively, having built a lead on two of three scorecards through nine rounds of a scheduled 12. In round 10, however, Kirkland broke through and sent Molina to the deck just as the bell sounded to end the round. Referee Jon Schorle picked up the count, and one of Molina’s cornermen, thinking the round had ended, stepped into the ring for a brief moment before Schorle shooed him away. It was an innocent mistake that had no impact on the fight — it didn’t buy Molina extra time to recover, as he’d already beaten the count and the round was over. But Schorle followed the letter of the law and disqualified Molina, rather than baking common sense into his decision.

The lopsided officiating pupu platter

Boxing history is littered with blown knockdown calls, dubious point deductions, and possible favoritism shown toward one fighter. Two fights from the 2000s stand out for the way the referees crammed in all of these elements.

On December 13, 2003, in the (overly) friendly confines of his native Germany, long-reigning super middleweight titleholder Sven Ottke retained his belt over England’s Robin Reid by scores of 115-113 twice and 117-112. Those cards were scandalous enough, as most neutral observers felt Reid had won a slight majority of the rounds. But the refereeing of Belgium’s Roger Tilleman made a huge difference on the 115-113 cards. In round 6, Reid dropped Ottke with a left hook; Tilleman called it a slip. Moments later, Tilleman deducted a point from Reid for a headbutt, even though the fighters’ heads hadn’t clashed. In a two-point fight, back-to-back calls like that made all the difference.

When Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko squared off for the first time on August 13, 2011, in Las Vegas, referee Russell Mora did his best Roger Tilleman impression. Mares landed low blows throughout the fight and received repeated warnings, but never a point deduction. Then, in round 11, Abner floored Agbeko with perhaps the lowest punch he threw all evening, and Mora ruled it a knockdown. With Mares winning a majority decision by scores of 113-113 and 115-111 twice, this is one where it’s hard to say definitively that the referee decided the winner. Agbeko lost a point he shouldn’t have lost in the 11th, and Mares didn’t lose any points when almost certainly he should have been penalized a time or two, but was it enough to make up four points?

Mora later acknowledged of his work in the fight, “That was the worst thing that I have ever done.”

After-the-fact regrets can’t undo the damage, of course. But if that referee who handed the Chiefs the Super Bowl two years ago with a ticky-tack holding call wants to step up and say, “That was the worst thing that I have ever done,” I’m listening.

(Or at the very least, how ‘bout a makeup call sometime during this Sunday’s game, zebras?)

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.