By Keith Terceira
Last week we told readers of the difficulties surrounding the events that took place at Soaring Eagle Casino at Mount Pleasant, Michigan. The main event between Bronco McKart and Raul Marquez appeared to be littered with controversy and official impropriety after close scrutiny.
An appeal to the Saginaw Chippewa Boxing Commission to provide the judges score sheets instead of the summary sheets went unanswered up until we received them today from Bill Miley via Gene McKart.
Raul Marquez (40-3-1 29KOs) has signed to fight Giovanni Lorenzo (28-0 ) at the Hard Rock partially based on his supposed defeat of Bronco McKart in Michigan on 3-29. McKart’s camp has maintained ever since the bout was declared a win for Marquez that something “smelled fishy in Denmark” with the entire way the show was run by the fledging tribal commission and its advisor Bill Miley .
McKart sent me a copy of the summary sheets that were mailed to them when they first issued their complaint. The summary sheets appeared to have been altered on several occasion in regards to the scoring of Judge Bill Paige. First it appeared as if Paige’s tally was swithed from a 95-95 to a 96-95 for MCKart.
Judge Gary Merritt ruled it 97-93 Marquez on both the Summary sheet and on his official scorecards so no problems are evident with his judging the bout.
The trouble appears in the transcription from the official judges sheets to the summary sheet by Bill Miley whom the Saginaw Chippewa Boxing Commission left to officate the card. Ron Cunningham score cards clearly rules the fight a draw but when it was rewritten to the summary sheet round six is mistakingly given to Marquez 10-9. Round six on Cunningham’s score sheet is without a doubt ruled 10-9 in favor of McKart and Cunningham’s official score is 95-95 not 96-94 Marquez.
Paige’s score sheets indicate that he did not rule in favor of McKart 96-95 as reported but called the fight 95-95 a draw. The error seems to once again be in the tranfer of numbers to the summary sheet where in round six it was written as a 10-8 round for McKart when officially Paige scored it a 10-9 round for Bronco. The official score sheets from Paige add up to another 95-95 total and again a draw.
Officially, by the judges scorecards the bout (which is how all bouts are judged globally) the totals are as follows Bill Paige 95-95, Ron Cunningham 95-95, Gary Merritt 97-93 a majority draw
When these errors were discovered this morning we placed several calls to Richard Feely the attorney investigating the protest issued by McKart for the Sag-Chip Commission with no returned calls.
In a call to Gene McKart, father/manager for Bronco, we were informed
“The whole issue can be resolved by the Tribal Boxing Commission correcting their bad math on the summary sheets and ruling the fight by the way it was officially judged and avoid litigation by us, we have already been damaged by the loss and have lost out on fights.”
It is obvious that with the official scorecards at hand that the Saginaw Chippewa Boxing Commission has no leg to stand on when it comes to correcting the injustice in the scoring error. Bill Miley is not a member of the commission but a hired consultant who incorrectly transposed the official judges scoring and in no way should the commission be able to ignore the error. One also wonders if the Casino took bets on this fight and now must report this error to the Gaming Commission to return monies. A call to the Gaming Commssion has not been returned.
McKart has now a loss on his record that he did not sustain and that has value in the world of boxing. If Marquez gets a shot at the title based on a win over Bronco then again Bronco has suffered damages to his career and his shot at a title bid.
“ All the Tribal boxing commission has to do to amend the scoring sent to us is send a letter with the corrected scoring” a member of Fight fax told this reporter today.
With the other reported troubles related to the running of the March card at the Soaring Eagle Casino one could not imagine that the correct scoring would not be sent to Fight Fax and the bout ruled a draw by the Saginaw Chippewa Boxing Commission unless it has further decided that it can operate in a way that is quite unbelievable and may be opening itself to a Federal investigation.
Fans of justice can send their wishes for a correction in this error to
We will continue to bring you updates as they evolve!
