By Keith Idec
The last time Isaac Chilemba traveled to an opponent’s backyard for an important fight, one of the three judges and the referee were from his foe’s country.
Quebec-based judge Richard DeCarufel scored Chilemba’s 12-round fight against Colombian-born Montreal resident Eleider Alvarez a draw, 114-114, on November 28 in Quebec City, Canada.
The two other judges – Americans Peter Hary (118-110) and Nathan Palmer (115-113) – scored their light heavyweight fight for Alvarez (19-0, 10 KOs).
Chilemba (24-3-2, 10 KOs) is certain did enough to beat Alvarez, thus the one request he made to his New Jersey-based promoter, Main Events, before accepting Monday’s meeting with Russia’s Sergey Kovalev in Ekaterinburg, Russia, was that the three judges and referee come from countries other than Russia. Kovalev’s knockout ratio (87 percent) suggests the judges might not factor into the outcome of their fight for Kovalev’s IBF, WBA and WBO light heavyweight titles, but the 175-pound contender from South Africa got his wish.
The three judges the IBF assigned to score their 12-round fight are Phoenix, Arizona’s Chris Flores, Hungary’s Zoltan Enyedi and Nicaragua’s Gustavo Jarquin. The IBF also assigned Macedon, New York’s Charlie Fitch as the referee for the Kovalev-Chilemba bout, which HBO will broadcast on tape delay at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT from DIVS Sports Palace.
The referee for the Alvarez-Chilemba bout, Michael Griffin, also is from Quebec (Montreal).
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
