By Keith Terceira
Seminole Warriors Boxing’s executive director Leon Margules took the time today to respond to the investigation and possible change in the decision of Raul Marquez’s bout with Bronco McKart. Though we confirmed yesterday with Fight Fax that the change had already been issued by the Saginaw Chippewa Boxing Commission from a split decision in favor of Raul to a majority draw. It came as quite a surprise to the Seminole Warriors Boxing head because it was only yesterday that he received notice of an investigation.
“Why they (Sag.Chip Commission) didn’t notify me earlier, I don’t understand, if they make changes prior to hearing our side their will be problems. There is a thing in this country called due process which gives us a right to participate in the process if a decision can be made that will affect us. At the end of the day though, a draw does not mean that much because Marquez is signed to fight Lorenzo and the IBF has sanctioned it. The date is June 21 and it will be at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida.”
Margules was in Poland at the time that the McKart protest was reported by me, and I made two attempts to reach him out of responsible journalism. We discussed the fact that Fight Fax had informed me that they had already amended the results and he fervently disagreed, stating that they had only received the letter informing them of the investigation yesterday.
“It was obvious to anyone that knows boxing that Marquez won seven or eight of the ten rounds. What bothers me is why it took the commission a month to notice a mistake. How do we know short of handwriting experts and lie-detector tests that those are the real scorecards. How do we know that someone hasn’t messed with them or that because McKart is the hometown guy and Gene was screaming, they figured out a way to change the originals.”
When approached with the question of his involvement with the scoring and his correcting the ring announcer and the way he was announcing the result, Leon laughed a bit but you could hear the frustration in his voice.
“ All I simply did was notice that the announcer was going to make a mistake in the way he was going to announce the split decision and the promoter in me came out. The announcer began to announce both the scores in favor of Marquez first before the McKart score, which would have ruined the suspense of the split decision for the crowd. So I told him to announce the score favoring McKart before announcing the second score favoring Marquez. Its like “No good deed goes unpunished” and this is what you get for helping a guy out.”
There had been some concern about Leon Margules’ position at ringside and he quickly informed us that during the fight he never left his seat until the fight was over. Fact of the matter was he tells us that he was sitting beside Tommy Hearns the whole time who also thought Marquez won the fight convincingly.
“The fact is, in Europe the corners are sometimes able to see the judges scoring between bouts and the WBC now has open scoring,.”
Margules is firm in his belief that this matter is still under investigation and nothing as far as he is concerned has been decided. We also discussed the upcoming bout with Lorenzo and there are no problems with the bout coming off . Also on the card that night is Abraham versus Miranda. Should Marquez and Abraham come out with a victory then Margules is fairly sure that the bout between Raul and Abraham will take place in Germany where the money is. That is, unless one of the networks in the U.S. is impressed with the way the two Hard Rock bouts come off. As of right now though, it looks like Marquez is bound for Europe should he defeat Lorenzo.
