Joseph Agbeko Robbed by Referee in Controversial Fight

I just finished watching the Joseph Agbeko vs Abner Mares bantamweight title match on Showtime. All I have to say is that the performance of referee Russell Mora Jr was the worst job by an official in boxing that I have ever seen. 

The fight itself was a very good one, with a lot of good exchanges, and you could make a case that either fighter deserved the nod. The scores of 115-111 (twice) and 113-113 were fine and right on point. However, they don't tell the story of what fully happened. 

To start, in Round 1, Mora called a knockdown of Agbeko on a punch that never landed and was clearly a slip. So at this point Agbeko has already lost one point that he should never have had taken away from him, but this is merely the start.

Over the course of the next 10 rounds, AMares legitimately landed 10 to 12 egregious low blows. And even worse, Mora was actually warning Agbeko for various offenses, none of which were very serious. A point could've been taken from Mares at almost any point from about Round 4 to Round 11, but a deduction never came and Mares was allowed to pound away below the belt of Agbeko.

Showtime announcer Al Bernstein, who has covered thousands of fights in his career, repeatedly said that he would hate to criticize an official, but that he couldn't remember seeing such a bad job done by a ref in all of the fights he's covered. Antonio Tarver was crying injustice throughout the fight as well.  

When Round 11 rolled around, the fight was on the table and both guys knew it. During an exchange, Mares pivoted and threw a very hard left that clearly, and I mean clearly, landed directly on the cup of Agbeko. Mora stopped the action and stepped in, seemingly to finally take a point away from Mares, which was long overdue.

But Mora inexplicably began the 10 count over Agbeko. I turned to my Dad and we both agreed that it was almost like Mora was in some way trying to help Mares, especially because he was literally right in front of the fighters when the punch landed and had a perfectly clear view.

By the way, Agbeko was winning the round at the time of the knockdown, but instead of winning 10-9, he lost the round 10-8. 

If those two knockdown calls are corrected, and Mares loses a point, and he could've probably been disqualified given the amount of low blows that landed, Agbeko wins this fight and keeps his title, and moves ahead to a possible big money fight against Nonito Donaire.

Now, instead he has to file a protest, go to court for the protest, deal with tons of red tape and hope that Mares gives him a rematch. It is fights like this that turn people away from boxing, and it's a real shame that a really solid fight will have to be marred in controversy.

After the fight, Jim Grey confronted Mora with the videotape of the knockdown that was clearly low. It was pretty amusing to see him try to defend himself when he saw that he was so clearly in the wrong.

I really feel bad for Joseph Agbeko. He's a good guy and hopefully he'll get a big fight soon enough. And I hope that perhaps other boxing officials will watch this fight and learn from it, so that this type of bad publicity and controversy that constantly plagues boxing can be avoided in the future.