Ed Mulholland / Matchroom
In 2019, boxing was tainted by tragedy. We are saddened by the loss of Maxim Dadashev, the junior welterweight prospect who suffered from injuries suffered in a knock that lasted too long. We shouted about Patrick Day, the happy happy junior middleweight whose gruesome fight with Charles Conwell ended with a combination he would never wake up to. We prayed when a continent was gone, Hugo Santillan suffered three heart attacks after his fight, who died days later in a hospital bed.
And we learned nothing.
On Saturday night, on a DAZN-streamed map in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the incompetence of boxing was on full display. In the co-main event, Israel Madrimov confronted an emerging 154-pound controversy, Eric Walker, a 37-year-old veteran. For eight rounds, it was a competitive battle. In the ninth, Madrimov connected with a driving left hand, sending Walker to the mat crashes.
That alone is not how the referee, Gary Ritter, saw it.
Knight, an Oklahoma-based official, ruled that Madrimov’s body, not the punch, put Walker down. “It was a good punch,” Ritter told Madrimov in the ring. ‘But you hit him with the shoulder, and that’s why he fell down. If you had not done so, the fight would have been over and you would have had a knockout. “
Replays soon showed that Ritter’s statement was complete nonsense.
“The call was wrong,” Steve Smoger, a Hall of Fame referee, told SI.com. “The knockdown was preceded by a legal punch. The shoulder did nothing. This happens on many occasions. Sometimes fighters carry each other. You need to distinguish what caused the fighter to go down. My shoulder did not play a role. ”
The call was bad. What happened next was less. With Walker shrinking on the canvas, Ritter advised him to get up. Walker stayed there for almost a minute. “He says he’s dizzy,” Ritter told a doctor, who climbed into the ring. When Walker got to his feet, he strutted to the ropes, and his body crashed over them. From there, Walker crashed in again, this time into the corner.
As soon as he left, Walker gave every indication that he was ready.
“It was over,” Smoger said. There was no recovery. If you’re hit like a shot, you’re ready to go. When you see one [lying] so you stop the fight. ”
The fight continued, and so did it, with Madrimov, a 25-year-old Uzbek star on the fast track to a chance at a world title, a heavily anticipated hitter who had cut out all five of his former opponents. At the end of the 11th round, Ritter said to the corner of Walker, “He takes a lot of punishment.” And then Ritter – and Walker’s bailiffs – allowed Walker to come out for the 12th and record three more minutes.
“I do not care what caused it or what the reason was,” said Walker’s promoter, Lou DiBella, who was not at the show due to COVID-19 restrictions. ‘I’m not ready to crucify a referee for a corner he did not see. But at that moment, the fight should not continue. Go to the scorecards. Do not take a moment when the man collapses. It was a very dangerous mistake. The fight should not continue from that point. ”
Would DiBella, who was promoting Day, have stopped the fight?
“I would have gone to his corner and said I think you should throw in the towel,” DiBella said. ‘Or we should have gone to the committee table and said to the scorecards. There were many mistakes. ”
Remember this, boxing, as the crocodile tears stream to the next fatal in-ring. We are bewildered by death; the less we shoulder off. In June, Yenifel Vicente buried a low blow well below Jessie Magdaleno’s belt line. With Magdalenno’s hands down and before referee Robert Byrd could step in, Vicente pulled out a right hand that bounced off Magdaleno’s skull. Magdaleno first hit the canvas face. He walked that path for more than 30 seconds, before rolling on his back for a few more minutes.
By any definition, Magdaleno was exterminated.
However, the struggle could continue.
That both hunters, Magdaleno and Walker, wanted to, are both true … and completely irrelevant. How many times have we seen a fighter stop and, minutes later, the stopped fighter insisted he could continue? Fighters want to fight. Deontay Wilder would have taken a few more rounds of penalties from Tyson Fury, had Mark Breland not thrown in the towel. Arturo Gatti would have Oscar De La Hoya knocked on his door forever had Hector Rocha not jumped on the ring and Pat Lynch would not have thrown in the towel.
Fighters should not protect themselves.
Referees are.
“We have to save them from themselves,” Smoger said.
Cornermen are.
On Saturday, both failed, miserably.
Where was Walker’s corner, when her fighter tracked back on spaghetti legs, two laps to hit and with almost no hope of winning? Where was Ritter, when Walker took a few wreck hooks for a minute, and ended every chance at a final gasp comeback?
Remember this, all hence, when the next tragedy strikes. Boxing is a dangerous sport. You get stabbed with a big shot, you get hurt, which unfortunately comes with the territory. But brutal beatings do not. If a fighter is hit with an illegal head shot and it takes longer than a 10-count to get to his senses, there should be a fight.
You do not ask a warrior if he wants to continue.
A warrior will always.
Get angry, box, channel the frustration felt after the deaths of Santillan, Dadashev and Day and demand reform. Call for Nevada, where Magdaleno took his knockout punch, to change his rules. Enter that Oklahoma, where Walker escaped, is doing the same.
Care now, if you can do something.
Or do not act as you do when you can not.
.
