Melissa Miller takes her career as a boxer seriously.
Having won the SA bantamweight title in 2018 and then being named Female Boxer of the Year in 2019, the mother-of-one believed she could make a living out of fisticuffs.
The harsh pandemic regulations convinced her to shut down her little hair salon and focus on boxing.
She doesn’t own a car and lives in a rented back room in Eldorado Park. Getting to the gym in Soweto requires catching two taxis and the commute takes about an hour.
When coach Lucky Ramagole occasionally gives her a lift, the driving time is about 20 minutes.
Her career didn’t ignite as she might have hoped after that, with two non-title losses. In August 2021 she lost her title on a majority decision to Sharadene Fortuin in a fight she believes was unfair.
She lost a rematch in December that year, again believing she was robbed, but she still didn’t give up hope.
When the offer for a third scrap against Fortuin in East London came, she trained harder than ever, determined to show that at 37 years old she was still a force.
Then the tournament, initially planned for June 16, was postponed to July 2.
Then days before the fight she was informed the promoter, Rumble Africa Promotions, was experiencing cash-flow problems. “I was told the fight was cancelled so I agreed to lower my purse to get the fight because I had been training hard for it.”
Miller went into the ring and gave as good as she got.
At the end she was declared the winner by split decision. Two judges felt she had won — Thandi Ngodwana gave it to her by 97-93 and Lulama Mtya had it 95-94 in her favour. Allen Matakane saw it the other way, giving Fortuin the fight by 96-94.
Miller had reclaimed the belt she felt she should not have lost in the first place.
And then three days later her dream turned to nightmare. Boxing South Africa (BSA) contacted her and told her there had been a scoring error on Mtya’s card which had been tallied incorrectly.
It should have been 95-95 and that means the fight was actually a draw — there were pundits in the crowd who believed Miller had won — and the champion keeps her title.
Miller’s crown had vanished once again.
As compensation BSA arranged that Miller would get a third rematch.
The regulator is also reportedly taking disciplinary action against the fight supervisor, Phakamile Jacobs, for making the mistake.
Yes, it was his blunder, but there are others who may be culpable.
The procedure of scoring during a national title fight requires the referee to collect the judges’ scores after each round and hand them to the supervisor, who then copies them by hand into a master scorecard.
He adds up the scores at the end of the fight.
I have it on good authority that when Jacobs entered the scores for round two, he first wrote Mtya’s score down incorrectly, making it 10-9 for Miller. Realising his mistake, he rectified it by writing over the 10 with a 9, and the 9 with a 10.
When it came time to adding up the scores, he presumably misread the round two score for Fortuin and arrived at 94 instead of 95.
But the mistake was pointed out to Jacobs within minutes, and he went and spoke to BSA director of operations Mandla Ntlanganiso, presumably about the error.
What should have happened is that they should have immediately informed the two camps and then had the ring announcer read out the correct result.
But nothing happened for three days, and that is unacceptable.
If Ntlanganiso was made aware of the error then he too should be facing a charge alongside Jacobs. Ntlanganiso did not respond to my question asking if he had been made aware of the mistake.
And what about Mtya?
Should he have known that his scorecard was not 95-94?
Sure, he’s handing in his scores after each round and he might not remember how many rounds he’s scored for which boxer by the end.
But I would argue that as a veteran judge — he’s worked many world title bouts, including one in the US and another in Australia — he should have immediately realised there was a problem because a scorecard of 95-94 means that over 10 rounds the two boxers between them lost 11 rounds.
The only way that can happen is if the judge has scored at least one 10-8 round, resulting from a knock-down or total dominance by one boxer.
But Mtya didn’t score any 10-8 rounds. He scored 10 10-9 rounds, five for Fortuin (second, third, eighth, ninth and 10th) and the other five for Miller. He also had no even rounds.
It’s basic maths and alarm bells should have rung automatically for Mtya the moment he heard 95-94.
If he hurried over to Jacobs, pointing out the problem, then kudos to him.
And if he didn’t realise anything was amiss, he should hang his head in shame because he failed to demonstrate the level of professionalism required of him.
Miller, on the other hand, displayed pure professionalism and did not deserve to be a victim of BSA bungling.
Talking of lack of professionalism, for more than a week I’ve tried to pin down BSA’s acting CEO Erick Sithole for an interview — on Miller-Fortuin and other issues — but he keeps ducking and diving.
At 3pm on Saturday, a time he had suggested I call him, Sithole told me he was busy and promised to call back 10 minutes later. I’m still waiting, but I’m sure my interview with boxing’s Erick “the eel” will materialise eventually.
It’s also worth noting that the debacle surrounding the Miller-Fortuin fight was not the first time we’ve seen disasters coming out of the Eastern Cape.
The region has been a law unto itself since I started covering boxing in 1996.
They call the Eastern Cape the Mecca of South African boxing, and in terms of their ability to churn out good boxers, I won’t disagree.
But when it comes to almost all other activities outside the ring, from administration to promoting, then I’m inclined to argue that the region is more like Sodom and Gomorrah.
How I wish they’d prove me wrong.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.