UNCASVILLE, Connecticut – Lou DiBella is concerned about the possibility of judges shorting Sergiy Derevyanchenko again.
The veteran promoter is convinced Derevyanchenko did enough to win his grueling fight against Gennadiy Golovkin last October 5 at Madison Square Garden. DiBella doesn’t think Derevyanchenko deserved to lose his 12-round middleweight title fight to Daniel Jacobs, either.
Golovkin beat Derevyanchenko by slim margins on all three scorecards to win a 12-round unanimous decision. Eleven months earlier, Jacobs defeated Derevyanchenko by split decision.
The tenacious Ukrainian contender will get his third middleweight title shot Saturday night, when he’ll challenge Jermall Charlo for the WBC 160-pound crown at Mohegan Sun Arena.
“I never screamed robbery with his fights, but he could’ve won both of them,” DiBella told BoxingScene.com. “And he, at least in my mind, won one of them clearly. I’m concerned, particularly because of the way the judging has been lately, and how uneven it’s been in this pandemic. And then you have this promotion, which has been an A-side, Charlo promotion.
“I mean, you see the minute-and-a-half [promotional video] that Showtime’s got out there, it’s a piece on the Charlo brothers. The commercial I saw today on one of my cable channels was a Charlo brothers commercial. Like, you wouldn’t even think it’s two fights that are as good as these two fights are. And I’m really concerned about the wrong thing happening again.”
DiBella’s promotional contract with Derevyanchenko expired following his loss to Golovkin, but Derevyanchenko and his adviser, Keith Connolly, retained DiBella as part of his team for the Charlo fight.
The 34-year-old Derevyanchenko (13-2, 10 KOs) is a slight underdog against Houston’s Charlo (30-0, 22 KOs), who hasn’t encountered as accomplished or as rugged an opponent as Derevyanchenko since he moved up from the junior middleweight division 3½ years ago. DiBella believes Derevyanchenko is capable of stopping Charlo, yet he doesn’t think Derevyanchenko should feel that’s the only way he can win.
“Sergiy can stop people based on aggression, and he’s got some power, and he throws a sh-tload of punches,” DiBella said. “But he’s not Mike Tyson. I don’t want this kid to be in a situation that if he doesn’t knock the guy out the other guy wins. He’s already been victimized twice, and he deserves a fair shake. But I think the judging panel that they’ve announced is pretty good.”
Nevada’s Tim Cheatham, Oklahoma’s David Sutherland and New Jersey’s Steve Weisfeld are the three judges who’ve been assigned to the Charlo-Derevyanchenko bout.
Charlo-Derevyanchenko is the main event of the first of Showtime Pay-Per-View’s two three-bout blocks Saturday night (7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT; $74.95).
“This whole thing is a setup for the Charlos to become some kind of a dual pay-per-view threat,” DiBella said. “But if Sergiy’s up all night a third time, believing that everything was set up against him, and he didn’t get a fair shake, in my mind, it’ll be horrible. I want the right guy to f--king win. But I know this is a super-competitive fight and either guy can win.”
Weisfeld is the only judge assigned to Charlo-Derevyanchenko who worked either the Golovkin-Derevyanchenko or Jacobs-Derevyanchenko bouts. He scored Jacobs a 115-112 winner of their October 2018 fight at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater in New York.
Tom Schreck scored Jacobs a 115-112 winner over Derevyanchenko as well. Julie Lederman scored that fight for Derevyanchenko, 114-113.
All three judges – Frank Lombardi (115-112), Eric Marlinski (115-112) and Kevin Morgan (114-113) – scored Golovkin the winner versus Derevyanchenko.
“I scored Sergiy and Danny Jacobs a draw,” DiBella said. “And the only reason I scored it a draw was because of the knockdown [in the first round]. There was one round I really couldn’t score. I had Sergiy up 6-5 in rounds, so it was a draw on my card. So, then I thought to myself, he needs to pick this up against Golovkin. He did and really couldn’t have picked it up anymore. At the end of the fight, honestly, everybody in the ring, including Triple-G, knew that Sergiy got the better of him. I don’t care what ringside observers thought, because I was looking in Golovkin’s face.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
