Oh, (No) Canada: Another Questionable Boxing Decision North Of The Border

Before this past Saturday, HBO hadn’t aired a live boxing card from Canada since 1977. It may take nearly as long for it to happen again.

I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s the feeling I got while watching the inexplicable decision handed in for the lightweight title fight between Joan Guzman and Ali Funeka on Boxing After Dark in Quebec City.

After starting slowly, the lanky Funeka grew more and more comfortable as the fight went on, peppering Guzman with jabs and continuing to pressure him with combinations.

Commentators Bob Papa, Max Kellerman, and Lennox Lewis wondered at one point if the referee would have to stop the fight because of the continuous damage Guzman was taking. To his credit, he battled gamely until the final bell, and I even generously gave him the last round on my personal scorecard .

In the end, though, I had it 116-112 for Funeka, which seemed in my mind to be giving Guzman every benefit of the doubt. My brother scored it 117-111, as did HBO’s Harold Lederman, and Tim Starks of The Queensberry Rules , whose opinion I really respect, had it 118-110 in Funeka’s favor.

Astonishingly, two of the official judges found six rounds to give to Guzman, turning in 114-114 cards that made the fight a majority draw (the final judge saw it 116-112 for Fuenka). The decision drew an on-air rebuke by all of the HBO crew and crushed Funeka, who was almost literally speechless when Kellerman interviewed him after the fight.

Understand that this was not a matter of style preferences like Carl Froch’s victory over Andre Dirrell last month, the last time I truly disagreed with a decision. In that fight, Dirrell retreated almost the entire bout and did a ton of grabbing and holding.

Funeka was the aggressor more often than not and ended with large disparities in punches thrown and landed. After the first four rounds, his shots appeared to have more power behind them, and he was able to keep Funeka on the outside a majority of the time, where his height and reach advantages served him well.

Despite all that, two judges were not convinced Funeka did enough to win. Starks called it the worst decision of the year on his Twitter page , and it’s hard to disagree with him.

It wouldn’t be quite as bad if it was an isolated incident, but the commentators had already done some discussion about the last time eyebrows were raised over a questionable call in Canada.

That happened in October 2008, when Lucian Bute got the benefit of some extra time —some observers have said as many as 24 seconds—to beat a ten-count after Librado Andrade knocked him down in the closing seconds of their fight.

Bute put that night behind him with an impressive fourth-round KO of Librade in Saturday’s main event. Boxing fans should be talking about his performance and how fans eager to see him fight reportedly snatched up all of the tickets at the Pepsi Coliseum in the first hour they went on sale.

Instead, the takeaway from this weekend is going to be how Funeka got robbed. It’s a shame too, because with titleholders like Bute and Jean Pascal, boxing in Canada is riding a nice wave right now.

Fighters complaining about the home cooking they encounter when fighting in foreign countries is nothing new. American boxers constantly gripe that they can’t get a fair shake in Europe, and vice versa.

It’s also a little unfair to paint a whole country with one brush, so let’s assume that there are knowledgeable, competent boxing officials who reside north of the border. Those people need to be promoted to the big time pronto, because the public perception of big time boxing in Canada just took another uppercut flush on the chin.

If that keeps happening, it really might be another few decades before HBO makes its next trek to the home of the Maple Leaf.

Nick Tylwalk is the editor and co-founder of BoxingWatchers.com . Follow his Twitter feed @Nick_Tylwalk .