Holyfield, Marquez Plead To Have Bad Judges Tossed Away
Nov 1, 2017 • 11:54 PM ET
By Miguel Rivera
A group of former world champions such as Evander Holyfield and Juan Manuel Márquez, have asked that boxing judges who are incapable in their duties are immediately dismissed, because thanks to their mishaps the sport of boxing continues to lose credibility and the retired fighters believe it is time to do something.
During the intervention of the championship committee at the 96th convention of the World Boxing Association, which is taking place in Colombia, Holyfield was clear to make his point.
He said that you can not have people who are not qualified to judge the performances of two men who are risking their lives in the ring.
"It's a big problem with the judges, it's not possible to see things in a very different way, Sugar Ray Leonard ran in the ring and won, Mayweather ran in the ring and won, but the others ran and lost, and people call them chickens" , Holyfield told international media.
"It's a matter where this a conflict of being in agreement, this is hurting boxing, people who judge have never fought before and they qualify them as boxing judges... personally I always fought hard, I never wanted to leave anything to the judges, because when you see other people scoring a fight without ever having been in there ... the thing that must happen with the judges is that if one of them fails, he must be removed, it's wrong, the boxing robberies can not continue happening, they need to eliminate them."
Former champion Juan Manuel Marquez said, to begin with, the judging criteria should be unified internationally, as there are judges who like a certain style and regardless of what happens they always score rounds for this or that fighter.
"The important thing is to agree on the criteria, it happened to me many times, to put professional and neutral judges in there who are not inclined to a certain boxer, because boxing has lost credibility, judges have not been doing their work and commissions must put capable judges to stop what is happening," said Marquez.
