King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Boxing shoots itself in the head again. Hey, that's corpse abuse! Plus: Wisconsin wins the Frozen Four.
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April 10, 2006 | The big boxing news this week is Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s unanimous decision over Zab Judah to win Judah's IBF welterweight title.
Actually, the big news is the melee that was set off when Judah hit Mayweather with a low blow in the 10th round, then Mayweather's uncle and head trainer, Roger Mayweather, jumped into the ring.
A brawl ensued that eventually involved Judah's father and trainer, Yoel, various ringsiders, police and security, and a cop standing on the ring apron, patting his holster and warning still more people not to step up.
Order was restored and the fight continued, but the boxers' purses were withheld pending a hearing of the Nevada State Athletic Commission Thursday. The commission could disqualify Mayweather and declare Judah the winner.
Boxing tradition calls for a disqualification whenever a second steps into the ring during a fight, but Nevada's rules say the referee, in this case Richard Steele, has discretion to disqualify but isn't required to do so.
Steele, who had called timeout to give Mayweather five minutes to recover from the low blow, which Steele ruled was not intentional, decided not to disqualify Mayweather. The challenger, considered by many the best fighter in the world at the moment, was easily ahead on points at the time.
The fact that he'd called timeout gave Steele some wiggle room, since Roger Mayweather didn't enter the ring during action, and Steele told reporters he did take into account that a DQ might have set off a real riot outside the ring.
What the commission decides to do will have little to do with what's right or fair and much to do with politics and finance. Disqualifying Mayweather would set up a lucrative rematch with Judah -- it's telling that Judah's promoter, a certain Don King, said, "DQ the fighter and let him whip his ass again" -- and I have no idea how the political winds in Nevada are blowing this week. I suspect the decision will stand, and commissioners have already said Roger Mayweather faces a long suspension.
There are a couple of funny things here. One is that the Nevada commission's longtime executive director, Marc Ratner, is leaving boxing next month to run the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
There's a nice feather in the cap for boxing, losing one of the top officials in the sport to a made-for-TV enterprise with, not to put too fine a point on it, not a whole lot of rules. Imagine if Paul Tagliabue were leaving the NFL to run the arena league. Or maybe Bud Selig quitting baseball to become the commissioner of whiffle ball.
Mmmmm, Bud Selig quitting baseball.
Anyway, another funny thing is that Don King is sounding like the most reasonable guy in the room. "I understand discretionary powers," King said after the fight, according to a report by Ron Borges in the Boston Globe, "but follow the rules."