by David P. Greisman

The NFL zebras protect Tom Brady. The NBA referees show favoritism toward star players. Major League Baseball umpires made several obvious mistakes during this year’s postseason. And NCAA football refs, particularly those working for the Southeastern Conference, seem to blow calls nearly as often as they blow their whistles.

When officials in the mainstream sports err in judgment, their decisions become fodder for discussions – their decisions are analyzed on television, print and Internet sports outlets, debated by bantering columnists, disparaged by rambling radio hosts, and damned by disappointed bar patrons.

The loss, though, is just that: a loss. Professional athletes are still guaranteed their multimillion-dollar salaries. Amateur players won’t be written off; draft scouts look more at individual performance than team success.

That’s not the case when it comes to the Sweet Science. Fighters’ paychecks can decrease in the wake of a defeat. A boxer will drop in the rankings and in public esteem. He is not always guaranteed another television date or another title shot.

Most of the debate about boxing officiating involves judges’ decisions. It is easier to argue scorecards and results. The scores are announced at the end of a fight. The results remain on a fighters’ record – there is no next season, no starting over.

Less discussed are the mistakes the third men in the ring make: the knockdowns not called, the bending and breaking of rules, and whether a fight was stopped too early.

Often forgotten, however, are the errors with consequences beyond the loss on the ledger, mistakes that put a boxer’s health in danger.

Two times in the past three weeks, a referee has allowed one fighter to get away with fouling his opponent. The first case, Al Seeger’s technical knockout loss to Victor Fonseca on Oct. 23, ended with Seeger hospitalized with bleeding on the brain.

The second, Harry Joe Yorgey’s knockout loss this past Saturday against Alfredo Angulo, saw Yorgey taking blows while his eyes rolled back, his head crashing into the canvas in a fight that could have ended one round earlier.

“The butt that caused me the most damage seemed to occur [32 seconds into] round two,” Seeger, now out of the hospital, wrote last week in a posting on the BoxingScene.com message board.

“It’s not a great angle to see [on the broadcast,] but I can hear the crack it made,” Seeger wrote. “For the rest of round two and three, there is also an obvious indentation on my forehead. This was the result of my sinus cavity being smashed inwards. I think after the third round, the area started to swell, which made it appear normal again.”

The referee for Fonseca-Seeger, Ruben Carrion of Texas, told Fonseca three times in that second round to watch his head. Seeger tapped his glove against his own head in the fourth round to signal that there’d been another clash of heads, but Carrion didn’t say anything at that time. Carrion advised both fighters to watch their heads in the fifth.

Fonseca received another admonition for hitting behind head in the sixth. Two rounds later, after Fonseca hit Seeger behind the head three times, Carrion told both fighters to watch their heads. Later that round, Foneseca landed another rabbit punch.

Fonseca hit Seeger after the bell ending the eighth. “One more time, and I’m going to take a point,” Carrion told him. In the ninth, Fonseca used his head to bull Seeger through the ropes. The fight ended later that round.

“I do believe that Fonseca purposefully used his head as a weapon throughout the bout,” Seeger wrote. “I would like to [protest] this loss with Texas and ask that the result be changed to a no contest. I’m not looking to punish my opponent or anyone else – but I don’t think he should be rewarded either.”

It’s difficult to determine how much of the butting of heads came from the fighters’ stances and styles and how much was intentional on Fonseca’s part. Fonseca is a southpaw, while Seeger is right-handed, a pairing that often increases the possibility of heads colliding. Fonseca tended to drop his head down when moving forward. And on the inside, Fonseca would drive his head against Seeger’s.

Carrion never took any points from Fonseca. Many referees want to abstain from being noticed and from having an influence on the results through point deductions, except when the fouls are so egregious or so repeated as to merit a penalty. Aside from the late hit, Carrion never warned Fonseca. Instead, he cautioned both fighters about their heads, an impotent device if one competitor is purposefully butting the other.

State athletic commissions historically do not license fighters who have suffered brain bleeds, though a couple states have recently decided to rule on a case-by-case basis for boxers who are seeking to fight again after recovering from such injuries. Seeger’s career might be over.

In the Angulo-Yorgey bout, Angulo hurt Yorgey halfway into the second round with a straight right hand. A barrage of punches sent Yorgey downward, kneeling with his arm curled over the second rope, the rope holding him up. Angulo threw a right hand to the back of Yorgey’s head as referee Johnny Callas of Connecticut stepped in, though Callas didn’t arrive in time to keep Angulo from hitting Yorgey with a follow-up left.

Yorgey’s knees and gloves hit the canvas shortly thereafter. Callas presumably had already ruled a knockdown before that on the basis of the ropes keeping Yorgey from going down or out of the ring. It would be difficult to blame Angulo for throwing those shots; Yorgey’s knee was not yet down, and the referee had not shoved him away. But the punch behind the head was still illegal, and Yorgey complained about it while Callas gave him his mandatory eight count. Before action restarted, Callas warned Angulo about it.

With 50 seconds left in the round, Yorgey, with his back against the ropes, dodged an Angulo right hand and moved away, turning his back to his opponent. Angulo then sent a right hand straight to the back of Yorgey’s head and threw another as Callas jumped between them. Yorgey staggered and stumbled into the blue corner. Callas kept the fighters separated for several seconds but neither warned Angulo nor allowed Yorgey additional time to recover.

Yorgey looked hurt and weak for the remainder of the round, absorbing plenty of punishment, including a brutal barrage in the final five seconds.

“Hey ref! What are you going to do?” Yorgey’s trainer, Jack Loew, yelled between rounds. “That’s bullshit! That’s terrible, ref!”

It did not appear that Callas ever checked on Yorgey between rounds.

Yorgey was shaken by the first solid right hand Angulo landed in the third. That was 23 seconds in. Ten seconds later, Yorgey, unable to keep an attacking Angulo away, fell forward in a failed tackle attempt.

It wasn’t long before Yorgey was backed into a corner again, throwing nothing but a few weak, flailing arm punches. If he’d thrown nothing at all, perhaps the fight would’ve been stopped sooner. Instead, the bout continued until Angulo knocked Yorgey cold with a left hook, then landed a hard right hook on the defenseless fighter as he fell to the mat.

“It was a shot to the back of the head that hurt me in the second round,” Yorgey said in a post-fight interview.

Loew was angry: “He hit my fighter in the back of the head twice, twice while he was on the floor,” Loew said. “He should’ve been disqualified. It was a terrible job of refereeing.”

Perhaps the fouls only accelerated the inevitable Angulo victory.

“The biggest problem was that he [Yorgey] hit him [Angulo] with some good shots but couldn’t stop him from coming forward,” Loew said.

Still, the fouls were overlooked. Angulo got an edge because of them, and Yorgey was at a disadvantage due to them.

Yorgey looked out of it as the third round began. But Callas, like many referees do, kept the action going as long as the hurt fighter made an effort to defend himself.

Even Angulo’s promoter, Gary Shaw, took offense with Callas’ performance: “He could’ve gotten Yorgey killed,” Shaw said later that night. “A ref’s got to know when a fighter is really hurt.”

“Yorgey was out cold. And the doctors had to revive him,” Shaw said. “And that’s scary. And that was the fault of the ref. And it should never happen. If I’m [censured] in Connecticut and the commissioner wants to pull my license for saying it, then so be it.  Harry Joe Yorgey is a brave young man and didn’t have to take the beating he took.”

Angulo landed 58 of 108 punches in the second round, including 52 of 81 power punches, a 64 percent connect rate. He surpassed that in the 63 seconds that was the third round, landing 31 of 40 punches, including 30 of 35 power shots, an 86 percent connect rate.

Yorgey, in contrast, hit Angulo with 11 of 52 punches in the second round, including 9 of 34 power punches, a 26 percent connect rate. In the third, Yorgey hit Angulo with four of 17 shots before he got knocked out, including 3 of 13 power shots.

Hindsight is a convenient thing. One can argue that the fight was basically over after the second round. That said, a fight can be over without being over – the result can be inevitable without it having arrived yet.

Yes, Yorgey was fading by the end of the second round. He didn’t yet appear, however, to be exhibiting symptoms that should have kept him from coming out of his corner for the third, though his stagger following Angulo’s second rabbit punch in the second round should have been a warning sign.

Both Carrion and Callas allowed infractions to alter the action. By failing to penalize those who committed the fouls, they further penalized the victims.

Even the best officials have their off nights, those calls they wish they could have back, those bouts where they miss something or make a questionable decision. The best officials, though, stand out by remaining unnoticed, keeping order without an overbearing presence. For them, errors are rare.

For the rest, for the less experienced or less acclaimed, there needs to be an official review, a second guessing of the third men in the ring, not to undermine their authority, but to underline how important it is for them to be there to protect fighters when fighters are no longer able to protect themselves.

The 10 Count

1.  I wish I could spend the whole of The 10 Count talking about the HBO main event between Chad Dawson and Glen Johnson, with my thoughts on the fight and some other details gathered in the post-fight press conference. Instead, a bunch of wackiness will fill this space this week.

Not to worry – there’s a “Fighting Words” Extra: News and Notes From Dawson-Johnson 2 article, available if you click this link .

2. You don’t need to tell me that nothing the sanctioning bodies do makes sense. I know this. And yet every once in a while, they do something that leaves me even more dumbfounded…

The World Boxing Council has suspended Chris Arreola from its rankings and from fighting for its world title for six months, all because of “his foul language in the ring,” according to the WBC’s press release, which is referring to Arreola’s post-fight interview with Larry Merchant following his September stoppage loss to Vitali Klitschko.

“WBC President Jose Sulaiman clearly expressed his being upset […] when he stated that there is no way a boxer within the scope of the organization he leads can be let express himself [sic] in such a vulgar way without getting a penalty.”

No shit.

3.  For the record, here’s what Arreola said in the post-fight interview:

“I’m sorry to everybody, man.  I really wanted to be a champion today, man. And I worked my ass off. Fuck. Vitali’s a strong motherfucker. He hits hard. And I never wanted to quit, man. That’s never in me. I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to go the whole 12 rounds. I know he was fucking me up, but hey, I’m sorry, guys.”

Arreola did unleash the F-word once more while talking with HBO’s Larry Merchant.

Let’s get this straight: Arreola can hit another man all he wants, something he cannot do legally outside the confines of the ring. But letting some expletives fly in the heat of emotion? The WBC frowns on such things.

4.  Not that the WBC ever reported a problem with David Diaz after Manny Pacquiao knocked him out last year to take the sanctioning body’s lightweight title.

“He was too fast. Fucker was too fast,” Diaz said in that post-fight interview with Jim Lampley.

“He was so fucking fast,” Diaz said to Lampley later, still on-camera. “Fucking amazingly fast. I thought Freddie [Roach] was in there fucking hitting me, too.”

Oh, and: “You go in and you risk it. But with a guy like this. Shit. At least I say I fought a good fighter.”

Plus: “He’s fucking good. […] I gave it my all, but his speed was just the fucking – the thing that sealed it for me.”

And, finally: “I’m 32 years old. I’m getting up there. To go with a guy like Manny Pacquiao? Shit. I think I’m doing pretty good.”

5.  Not that the WBC ever reported a problem with Ricardo Mayorga, who, while holding the WBC welterweight title, spoke of reuniting Cory Spinks with his dead mother and older brother.

And it’s not like the WBC threw a fit back when David Haye, former WBC cruiserweight titlist, appeared in Men’s Health magazine with a photo illustration of him holding Wladimir Klitschko’s decapitated head in his hand.

Nor did the WBC take issue when Haye, who was negotiating for a fight with WBC heavyweight beltholder Vitali Klitschko, wore a T-shirt that was amusing to me, but offensive to some, depicting him holding the decapitated heads of both brothers.

The Arreola suspension really doesn’t mean much beyond being sanctioning body silliness. Arreola doesn’t need the WBC to let him fight again, which he will do Dec. 5 on the televised HBO undercard to Paul Williams-Sergio Martinez. And Arreola probably wasn’t going to be fighting for a world title again within six months of the Klitschko loss anyway.

That said, which fits better: “The WBC – We Bleep Champions,” or “The WBC – We Banish Consistency”?

6.  That wasn’t it from the WBC last week, sadly. This came in another press release:

“Welterweight world champion Andre Berto of the U.S. requested approval for a voluntary title defense on January 30 against WBA champion Shane Mosley of the U.S. The request was approved on the condition that Mosley publicly apologize to the WBC for abandoning the WBC title to challenge Antonio Margarito for the WBA title in January 2009.”

Tim Starks of “The Queensberry Rules” boxing blog described such a demand as Mosley being told to “[kiss] the WBC’s ring for what is a routine act in boxing – a fighter ditching his belt for a more lucrative fight.”

Again, where’s the consistency?

The WBC didn’t ask Chad Dawson to publicly apologize for dropping his WBC 175-pound belt to face then-IBF beltholder Antonio Tarver for more money than he would’ve gotten to face Adrian Diaconu. At the time, however, the WBC did say it felt “very disillusioned with Dawson’s decision, as he was going to make the highest purse of his career against Diaconu.” Right…

But still, the WBC had no qualms getting Dawson for sanctioning fees just this past weekend when it made Dawson-Johnson 2 a fight for its interim light heavyweight title.

Which was necessary, of course, because Jean Pascal’s only defended his WBC belt twice this year and is scheduled to do it for a third time this December.

7.  Who are these idiots at the WBC? No, seriously, who are you? Please write in, so we can find out just how long you’ve been off your meds…

8.  Boxers Behaving Badly update: British light heavyweight prospect Carl Dilks, found guilty earlier this year of chasing two men into a Liverpool pub and then punching them out, will not spend time in jail, according to the Liverpool Echo.

Rather than serve one year in prison, Dilks, 26, was given a suspended sentence, which means that he’ll do 12 months behind bars if he breaks the law at all over the next two years. Dilks was also sentenced to 240 hours of unpaid work.

Dilks turned pro in 2007. He is 13-1 (4 knockouts), his only loss a three-round split decision from one of the one-night “Prizefighter” tournaments. His last appearance was in September, a 10-round points win over some dude named Billy Boyle.

9.  Son of a…: A few years ago, Showtime put on a card big on name value – Hearns, McGirt, Pryor and Witherspoon – but, well, the Hearns was Tommy's son (Ronald Hearns), the McGirt was Buddy's son (James McGirt Jr.), the Pryor was Aaron's son (Stephan Pryor), and the Witherspoon was Chazz Witherspoon, nephew of former heavyweight titlist Tim Witherspoon.

So many second-generation fighters enter the sport hoping to cash in on the feats of those who came before – Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will never have the talent or the titles his legendary father had, but he's making a healthy sum headlining shows and small pay-per-view broadcasts.

If people will buy it, why not sell it?

And so Dec. 12 in Las Vegas, a card will feature, on the undercard, a Hearns (Ronald), a Pryor (Aaron Jr.), a Jackson (John, son of Julian), and a McCall (Elijah, son of Oliver).

Hey, it’s still better than watching Hector Camacho Jr…

10.  “Star Boxing and Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club NYC to present a new boxing special event series,” says the press release in my inbox.

Well, I guess there should be no argument about where to hire the ring card girls from…

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com