Great matchups are being made now, but fans are still being robbed of true greatness
Great matchups are finally being made this year, but in my opinion fans are still being robbed of truly great fights and definitive outcomes. In an era where the championship rounds have already been eliminated once with the change from 15 round fights to 12 round fights, incompetent refereeing now consistently cuts out the new championship rounds, and the most dramatic part of the fight, almost every time a potentially great fight is well on its way to materializing.
I will use the two biggest fights of the year so far, Kovalev-Ward and Joshua-Klitschko, as examples. If you were rooting for Joshua and Ward to win, then you can't complain too much about how the fights ended I suppose, but in my opinion you are still being robbed of the true greatness both those fights could have become. Here is why:
In Joshua-Klitschko, Joshua hurt Klitscho badly in the 5th round. He tried to finish him but couldn't, and because of his muscular build, he became absolutely exhausted almost immediately. He became a walking corpse, and Klitschko almost KO'd him the next round.
It took multiple rounds for Joshua to regain even some energy. Even then, he only seemed to have energy for the first minute of every remaining round. After resting between the 10th and 11th rounds, Joshua had enough energy to start the 11th round to hurt Klitschko with an uppercut. He then went in for the kill, and was able to knock Klitschko down again, but Klitschko got up and had his wits about him. Joshua chased him down and tried to finish him again, but Klitschko moved out of the way, as Joshua's punches started to slow with fatigue again. Then he caught up to Klitschko on the ropes, and threw four huge punches, but the steam was off them enough for Klitschko to avoid all four punches.
Then the referee stopped the fight.
In a vacuum, did it look like Joshua would have won anyway? Of course, but that's if you forget what happened in the 5th round. It only took about 20 seconds of Joshua going for the kill in the 5th round for him to become a dead man walking. And that was 6 rounds earlier. In reality, all Klitschko likely had to do was avoid 5 to 10 more punches, and Joshua may overextended himself even worse, and really been dead this time. If not for the early stoppage, we may have had an entire third act of the fight in the remainder of the 11th round and 12th round that we as boxing fans were robbed of seeing. Maybe Joshua goes down again, then catches Klitschko again, and Joshua still wins. Maybe Klitschko wins. Maybe Joshua is able to finish him with those next 10 shots. We will never know. All we know is we were robbed of a definitive outcome, and a high likelihood of a truly great, all-time ending to a fight, because the referee stopped the fight on four missed punches.
In Ward-Kovalev, a similar situation may have taken place. Leaving out the fouls debate about how we got there, and let's just judge the fight on what did happen. Kovalev was hurt in the 8th round. Kovalev was hurt to the body and nuts. On the surface, it looked like he was going to lose anyway, even if the referee didn't stop the fight on a low blow.
But once again, context matters. For the Barrera, Brand, and first Kovalev fights, Ward said it was already a struggle to make 175 pounds. For the rematch, a fellow boxer (I think it was Malignaggi but I forget) estimates Ward added over 5 pounds of muscle for the rematch, meaning it must have been hell making wait. This gave Ward a big strength edge over his opponent, but like Joshua, it may have hindered his stamina. It hindered Joshua's and he didn't even have to make weight.
And there were indications in the fight that this was effecting Ward. In rounds 5 and 6, Ward barely threw a punch against Kovalev. He was already conserving energy. Then he came out almost desperate in the 7th, throwing many low blows, as if he was tired. He did the same in the 8th round, then after hurting Kovalev with the right hand, he went for the kill, and hit Kovalev with a few good shots, but could not drop Kovalev.
Ward was already conserving energy before this, and had not planned on going all out in only the 8th round. But he hurt Kovalev and just reacted, he went for the kill.
But what if the ref hadn't stopped it on a low blow, and Ward had been unable to finish Kovalev? Ward was already tired two rounds earlier before going all out for the kill. Like Joshua in the 5th round vs Klitschko, Ward may have been completely dead after that, had Kovalev survived to the bell. Kovalev's nuts would have had time to recover between rounds, but it takes longer than a 40 second rest to recover if you've totally blown your load going for the KO. And no matter how hurt Kovalev was to the body, if you are gassed vs Kovalev, even a tired Kovalev, you are at high risk for getting knocked down.
Had the fight not been stopped prematurely, we could have had a situation where Ward was dead for the next round, and Kovalev was able to drop him and go for the kill, but because of the damage to his body, was not be able to get it, and that could have completely blown Kovalev's load. Then Ward with another round to recover from throwing all those punches could have finished the job in the 10th, or it could have been an all out war between two totally gassed fighters for the championship rounds, with multiple knockdowns or at least huge haymakers landed each way.
Either way, it looked on its way to being a truly great, back and forth fight, perhaps with multiple knockdowns each way. Instead we got a fight with zero knockdowns, stopped on a low blow, that was competitive and somewhat back and forth, but not an all time great fight. If you're a Ward fan you may not care, you may just be happy Ward won, but as a boxing fan I can't help but feel like we are constantly robbed of great fights. It is so rare that 1. top matchups get made at all, and 2. the fight plays itself out in a way that going into the last few rounds, the ingredients are in place for an all time great historical fight, that I find it extremely frustrating when those two things actually happen, once in a blue moon, only for the referee to ruin it every single time.
As if 1 in a 100 odds of those ingredients coming together wasn't bad enough, it feels like every 1 in 100 times it does, the odds are still 99 out of 100 that the referee will ruin it anyway. Seriously, that's how often the referee ruins it. I cannot even remember a single all time great fight the last decade that wasn't ruined in one way or another by the ref (or the judges in some cases). If modern referees refereed Gatti-Ward, that fight would have been stopped halfway through and none of us would know what the fans were robbed of seeing. Well, just because we wouldn't have known, doesn't mean we wouldn't have been robbed. And there is a good chance we were in either Joshua-Klitschko, Ward-Kovalev, or both.
The only great, un-ruined top level fight I can remember this entire decade is Pacquiao-Marquez 4 and that's probably just because there was nothing the referee could do to stop a one-punch knockout. If Pacquiao had gotten up and the fight had gone on into the championship rounds, I bet he would have found a way to ruin it one way or another.
So as a boxing fan, why even hold out hope for great fights anymore? The ingredients almost never come together, and now I feel like even if they do, the ref will just stop it before it has a chance to really get to that edge-of-your-seat, "Oh my God this is insane" epic place that Klitschko-Joshua would have reached had Klitschko knocked down Joshua at the end of the 11th, or had Kovalev and Ward both knocked each other down in the 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th rounds as both stumbled around the ring barely able to stand, which is where it looked like that fight was headed had it not been stopped prematurely.
Why even watch if the referees will never let the fight reach its most exciting points and its definitive ending? And don't get me wrong I am all for protecting the fighters, but it's not protecting them when you end the fight off four missed punches, or a shot to the nuts when a fighter has not even been down yet. Let Joshua land one more big punch that either jolts Klitschko's head back or knocks him down, if he can, and then stop it. Let Ward actually knock Kovalev down at least once, and if Kovalev can't recover his legs during the 10 count enough to protect himself once action starts after, and he just keeps eating punches, then stop it. It's better for Ward, it's better for the fans, and in a way it's even better for Kovalev because it removes the doubt.
I don't want to give up on the sport completely, so I hope more boxing fans out there, and more writers, start talking about this! This issue needs to be brought to the attention of refs everywhere as soon as possible, otherwise we are likely to have another great fight ruined prematurely in September, and every one that comes up in the future as well. Seriously! I know not everyone notices because you may not actually be studying this and counting how often it happens, but I am telling you, that's what I've been doing, and it happens every time now. We are being robbed of some of the greatest fights of all time and fans don't even know it because they didn't see it. But there is a reason they didn't see it, and that is incompetent refereeing every single time.
This is killing excitement and interest in the sport as much as anything. Great matchups mean nothing if they don't result in great fights, or at least definitive outcomes, any more than the average matchups do. So I hope this issue starts to be addressed otherwise the big fights will never live up to expectations the way they used to.
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