Back in 2005 I attended a tournament at the Orient Theatre where Tshepo Lefele was awarded a narrow points win over Elmer Gejon of the Philippines for a stepping stone title.
One of the judges had it a draw, and the other two gave it to the South African by one point and two points. The East London crowd thought the foreigner had been robbed, and booed the decision.
An English ring official, who was off-duty watching the fight, was taken aback by the reaction of the fans. “Don’t they support their own fighters?” he asked.
Well, they do. Lefele, not being from the Eastern Cape, was about as foreign to them as the Filipino, so they judged the fight fairly. Had Lefele been from Mdantsane, it would have been a different story.
Boxing history is littered with tales of robberies and dubious actions to try swing fights in the favour of hometown fighters, and that excludes basic incompetence.
Even the great sheriff Wyatt Earp, immortalised in several movies including Gunfight at the OK Corral, once refereed a heavyweight fight between Tom Sharkey and Ruby Robert in 1896. Sharkey was knocked out in the eighth round, but the gunslinger disqualified Robert for an illegal low blow that had apparently landed comfortably above the belt.
And that was long before the US Mafia got their wretched claws into the sport in the mid-20th century, paying and threatening fighters to take dives.
Then there are the more subtle ways of manipulating fights, with biased judging and refereeing; I’ve seen referees tolling counts on felled boxers at different speeds. In one case there was a two-second difference in the counts to eight for two different boxers hitting the deck in the same round. It was as if the referee wanted the one to win.
Boxing was a mainstream sport and it still spat out dodgy decisions and took questionable actions.
We saw it again this past weekend in Kevin Lerena’s challenge for the WBA heavyweight regular title against Daniel Dubois.
After Lerena landed a glancing blow on the top of Dubois’s head, the Englishman, quite possibly buzzed, seemed to hurt his knee and went down. Referee Howard Foster counted and he got up, looking uncomfortable.
Twice more he went down, both times voluntarily.
Dubois’s corner managed to steady Dubois, and by the end of the second round he was in control. He knocked Lerena down in the third before the referee stopped the bout at the end of the round.
The accusations that have surfaced on SA social media streams include:
1. The first round ended several seconds too early.
2. The referee should have stopped the fight because of the three-knockdown rule still used by the WBA.
3. The referee stopped the fight after the bell ending the third round had ended.
4. Lerena should have been saved by the bell.
Kudos to Lerena for trying, but if he wanted a fair fight against Dubois, he might have had a better chance of finding it in East London, not London.
Yes, the first round sounded 10 seconds early on my stopwatch, but that wasn’t a key factor. Dubois had twice gone down to avoid Lerena’s shots, so at most he would have done it a fourth time and survived anyway.
On the second claim, the three knock-down rule, a WBA-specific regulation which stipulates that a boxer downed three times in one round is an automatic knockout, was not in effect. British rules were applied.
On the third charge, it was marginal — Foster waved it over a second after the bell sounded. It’s quite feasible the grotesque uppercut that turned Lerena’s head made his mind up to stop the fight, which happened before the bell. He can argue his decision was made before or as the bell sounded, but he actioned it a fraction later.
I didn’t have a problem with that.
On the fourth point, the rules in play state a boxer cannot be saved by the bell except in the 12th round. If a fighter goes down — being kept up by the ropes, as Lerena was, counts as a knock-down — the referee should keep counting after the bell sounds. In some cases the timekeeper should not sound the bell until the count is finished.
But what is questionable, for me, is that Dubois was allowed to go down twice without taking a shot.
The moment Lerena got too close he went down on his own accord. Twice.
The British boxing rules state that a boxer who doesn’t try is guilty of a foul.
Yes, Dubois was injured, but he wasn’t trying and that is a foul. Simple. He should have been warned at the very least. Maybe even disqualified.
That is where the English referee helped his countryman on Saturday night, whether it was intentional or because he was faced with an unusual situation. Boxers going down without being hit is pretty unusual.
But having said that, it was clear once Dubois found his rhythm, even with his injured knee, he was too strong for Lerena.
Kudos to Lerena for trying, but if he wanted a fair fight against Dubois, he might have had a better chance of finding it in East London, not London.
So here we are in the 21st century and boxing is still dishing up dodgy nonsense, except the sport has long since been downgraded to marginal status.
Is anyone really surprised?
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