Incompetent officials and Commissions are killing this sport, it’s time for change!
By Robert Brown, Doghouse Boxing (Jan 11, 2013) Doghouse Boxing
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In the last 12 to 18 months boxing has had a raft of seemingly unexplainable decisions, such as Williams vs Lara, Cloud vs Campillo and Rios vs Abril, those are just the terrible decisions, I’m not even counting the multitude of disputable decisions in 2012, already in 2013 we have kicked off the year with 2 incorrect decisions from judges, the Cunningham vs Adamek fight should have been awarded to Cunningham by at least 2 points, I personally had it 116/112, the first main event of the year for Friday night fights was a very important fight for both fighters, the winner possibly getting a world title shot in the near future I had it personally 116/112 for Usmanee that was conservative, most people had it 117/111, incredibly they gave the fight to Barthelemy, I said to myself here we go again another year another controversy that boxing doesn’t need. People including a lot of boxing fans try to create this illusion in their own minds that it is other combat sports such as MMA and K-1 kickboxing that are killing the sport of boxing, the fact remains this is not the case, boxing is doing major damage to itself from the inside out with incompetent and possibly on some occasions corrupt officials, ill-equipped and under resourced state commissions and promotional companies that will not cooperate with each other, if boxing doesn’t attempt to at least try to fix these problems the decline of the sport will be of boxing’s own making.

People in the boxing media cannot choose to sit on the fence and not offer a concrete solution or opinion to major problems in the sport and then complain in other outlets such as social media when these problems arise, because we have an obligation as custodians of this sport to report the facts even if what we say appears to harm the sport because we have a duty to improve the sport both for ourselves and for generations to come.

My solution to fixing the growing problem of ill-equip and possibly incompetent officials and commissions is this, first of all we must re-evaluate how officials such as referee’s and judges are trained and if possible make changes, a federal body that has the power to investigate and overturn incompetent or grossly incorrect decisions made by judges, referee’s or any other officials if the commission in charge fails to correct its own mistakes, I believe also that elite international panels of judges and referee’s must be established made up of the cream of the crop and these officials will be assigned the most important fights, these officials will be revaluated at regular times and will be promoted or struck off the panel depending on their performance. The people that appoint these officials to these panels must be independent and have no ties to anyone who they appoint and also must not be tied to promoters or managers to avoid collusion and these measures in my opinion will reduce levels of corruption because officials will not want to be kicked off the elite panels, if you think I’m over reacting tell that to the fighter that lost the world title because of bad decision making.

It’s time to stop complaining and start doing, I’ve done my part, and the question is? What are you going to do?

P.S. a separate arm of the body must also be established to control and administrate levels of drug testing for upcoming fights to take the pressure off fragmented and under resourced state athletic commissions.