Best Judges and Referees for 2014

Published

10 years ago

December 28, 2014

All through 2014 there were fights that were criticized and analyzed by the boxing public for problems in the judging and refereeing departments, which prompted public outcry on more than one occasion.

It started with the junior middleweight clash between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Alfredo “Perro” Angulo at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The Mexican war between the two was expected to be an explosive affair, but instead was one-sided as Alvarez pummeled Angulo during the first half of the fight.

Angulo waited too long to make his move in the fight and though he did not show signs of being seriously hurt during the fight, he was beginning to absorb big head-snapping shots. The referee for that fight was referee Tony Weeks, a veteran of many marquee fights. When he saw Alvarez connect with yet another head snapper, he jumped in between the two prizefighters and stopped the fight. Angulo was infuriated.

Fans erupted in anger at the arena and some even tossed beer and other items into the ring. Many felt that Angulo was not given enough time to retaliate, and that included the fighter from Mexicali. But what many do not know or recall is that Weeks had been involved in a fight years earlier when a fighter died because of injuries sustained in the ring.

Back in Sept. 17, 2005, in the same MGM Grand Garden Arena, Weeks was the third man in the boxing ring when Jesus “Matador” Chavez battered courageous Leavander Johnson for 11 rounds in their IBF lightweight title battle. In rounds nine and 10 the fight became one-sided, but the referee allowed the fight to continue. Johnson never hit the deck and willingly motioned for Chavez to continue. Weeks let the battle resume despite shouts from the crowd and even some from the media to halt the fight. It was not until the 11^th round that Weeks stopped the fight. Even then Johnson protested, but when he walked back toward the dressing rooms the boxer collapsed while talking to this reporter. Medics rushed to his side and he was sent to the nearby hospital. He died five days later.

Weeks was the referee for that Chavez-Johnson fight and this might be the reason he would stop a fight instead of allowing a one-sided beating to continue. Today he’s one of the top referees in the business.

Johnson would have turned 45 three days ago.

The robust-looking Weeks was also the center of attention when Marcos Maidana and Floyd Mayweather met on May 3, in the MGM Grand for the welterweight and junior middleweight world titles. It was a rugged affair as Maidana kept Mayweather against the ropes and pounded the champion with unorthodox overhand rights and left hooks. The referee Weeks did not break up the fighters as long as punches were being thrown. Maidana had a great first half of the 12 round fight, but Mayweather made crucial adjustments and walked away with a unanimous decision. Afterward he made criticisms of Weeks’ handling in the fight and complained that Maidana was allowed to do things that other referees would not allow, which is a lot of fighting inside.

“It didn’t bother me at all,” said Weeks when asked. “I just let the fighters fight.”

A rematch was given to Maidana but this time because of Mayweather’s complaints the selection of the referee seemed to be guided by comments he made to the media. The referee chosen for the rematch was Ken Bayless.

In the rematch Maidana was not allowed to fight inside. Throughout the fight whenever Maidana got close to Mayweather they were separated by Bayless, regardless if there was holding or not. Basically, the referee became part of the fight that night and Mayweather was given the handicap of being allowed to fight from the outside all night. Still, despite the referee interference, Maidana got some licks in.

Canelo vs. Lara

Fans pay a lot of money to see prizefights on the elite level. When Saul “Canelo” Alvarez met Erislandy Lara at the MGM Grand, it was pressure fighting versus the style of a boxer/mover. Their clash saw Lara move quickly around the boxing ring while seldom exchanging punches with the more aggressive Alvarez. It was one of the most boring fights of the year, especially at the elite level.

After 12 rounds two judges scored it for Alvarez and one judge, Jerry Roth, favored Lara. What’s interesting is that Roth usually favors the more aggressive fighter. Remember when Felix “Tito” Trinidad fought Oscar De La Hoya? Roth was one of the judges who favored Trinidad that night, though it clearly seemed De La Hoya won the first nine rounds of their encounter. But during the fight between Lara-Alvarez, he favored the Cuban who was reluctant to exchange. You never know what to expect from the judges. Roth is one of the best judges in the world but even he can’t be counted to stick to the script.

Best referees

Tony Weeks may not be Floyd Mayweather’s favorite referee but year after year he works a fight like a master conductor. The only people that complain about Weeks are the photographers who find it difficult to get photos when the wide-bodied Weeks is working a fight. His strength is that he allows the fighters to fight. He doesn’t interfere unless absolutely necessary. Some referees just overdo it and interfere too much. Not Weeks.

Pat Russell rarely makes a mistake inside the boxing ring. The white-haired Russell moves nimbly in and out of the ring and has the timing of an elite boxer. He’s one of the best referees in the last 15 years and if he’s working a fight then it’s in good hands. Russell has worked some of the most important fights in history but you can’t recall seeing him because he stays out of the way. He’s like a ghost inside the boxing ring. Russell makes sure the rules are followed and that a fighter can walk out of the ring.

Steve Smoger works the East Coast and has been the preeminent referee for a very long time. Nobody can compare to Smoger in that side of the country. He knows when to break up boxers, he knows when to let boxers know when they’re dropping low blows and when to stop a fight. It seems easy enough but not all referees know these important aspects. Some stop the fight in mid-action to warn about low blows or head butts. Smoger waits for the perfect time.

Other top notch referees for the year

Jack Reiss, Michael Griffin, Benjy Esteves Jr., Jon Schorle, Raul Caiz Jr., Ray Corona, Tom Taylor, Ken Bayless, Yuji Fukuchi, John McCarthy, Lou Moret, Mike Ortega, and Frank Garza.

Judges

This year has been an eye-opener for judges in the spotlight. On the same card we saw two bouts come to public scrutiny when Jose Benavidez was judged the winner over Mauricio Herrera. In the other bout Tim Bradley and Diego Chaves were scored a draw. One of the judges on the Herrera-Benavidez bout was Max DeLuca, one of the best judges in the world. Very few people felt Benavidez won the fight and felt all three judges were off their rocker. It’s a problem both boxing and MMA share.

Scoring a fight is not very easy and the method of scoring needs to be changed.

Max DeLuca has been one of the most respected and consistent judges in boxing for the last 10 years. Many consider DeLuca the very best judge of boxing today. But nobody is perfect. He had Benavidez the winner by a large margin. But the depth of his work speaks for itself. He is the best judge in the world. You want him judging a fight, especially for big stakes.

Jerry Roth has reigned as one of the top judges for the last 20 years. While other judges come and go he puts his experience to work on some of the top prize fights every year. The Nevada-based judge is widely respected by everyone in the boxing business.

Other top judges

Pat Russell, Marty Denkin, Glenn Feldman, Lisa Giampa, Pinit Prayadsab, Jack Reiss, Sergio Caiz, Levi Martinez, Patricia Morse Jarman, Oren Shellenberger, Julie Lederman, John McCarthy and Raul Caiz.

Honorable mention

Ray Corona, Adelaide Byrd, Alejandro Rochin, Fritz Werner, Robert Byrd and Tony Crebs.

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David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

10 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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