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By Lyle Fitzsimmons - Another traveling circus – this time up Florida’s Atlantic coast to close out a particularly well-timed mental health weekend – yields another cluttered Tuesday notebook:
I’m all for gratuitous outrage, righteous indignation and a shot of self-indulgent prosthelytizing, but after the Saturday night blather that oozed from my television courtesy of HBO, even I need a shower.
First things first, I won’t argue the ending to the Kirkland-Molina fight was decidedly unsatisfying.
Anyone who claims otherwise is, well… a little too easily satisfied.
But whether the in-ring events warranted full afterglow or sheepish walk of shame, the prodigious flow of “can you top this” disgust from Mssrs. Lampley, Steward, Kellerman and Lederman made me regret the one-night broadcast rendezvous far more than anything Texas-based officials did.
Upon watching the fight live, seeing myriad replays provided by the “network of champions” and taking another couple looks Monday afternoon courtesy of YouTube, I’m not convinced that referee Jon Schorle was anywhere near the criminal that the tuxedo-clad quartet made him out to be.
In fact, based on what I thought I knew about rules heading into Saturday night, Schorle was spot-on in his reaction. When a Molina team member entered the ring during a post-knockdown count and before the referee had signaled an end to the round, it was grounds for immediate disqualification.
Doesn’t matter that it had been a compelling fight.
Doesn’t matter that Molina was perilously close to winning.
And doesn’t matter that he’d been the victim of far too many dubious calls in the past.
Still, none of that came to immediate mind for the announcers, who lobbed every verbal hand grenade they could reach at Schorle – with Kellerman at one point saying that while he believed the ref had been “technically” right in making the DQ assessment, it was still “a terrible call.”
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I’m all for gratuitous outrage, righteous indignation and a shot of self-indulgent prosthelytizing, but after the Saturday night blather that oozed from my television courtesy of HBO, even I need a shower.
First things first, I won’t argue the ending to the Kirkland-Molina fight was decidedly unsatisfying.
Anyone who claims otherwise is, well… a little too easily satisfied.
But whether the in-ring events warranted full afterglow or sheepish walk of shame, the prodigious flow of “can you top this” disgust from Mssrs. Lampley, Steward, Kellerman and Lederman made me regret the one-night broadcast rendezvous far more than anything Texas-based officials did.
Upon watching the fight live, seeing myriad replays provided by the “network of champions” and taking another couple looks Monday afternoon courtesy of YouTube, I’m not convinced that referee Jon Schorle was anywhere near the criminal that the tuxedo-clad quartet made him out to be.
In fact, based on what I thought I knew about rules heading into Saturday night, Schorle was spot-on in his reaction. When a Molina team member entered the ring during a post-knockdown count and before the referee had signaled an end to the round, it was grounds for immediate disqualification.
Doesn’t matter that it had been a compelling fight.
Doesn’t matter that Molina was perilously close to winning.
And doesn’t matter that he’d been the victim of far too many dubious calls in the past.
Still, none of that came to immediate mind for the announcers, who lobbed every verbal hand grenade they could reach at Schorle – with Kellerman at one point saying that while he believed the ref had been “technically” right in making the DQ assessment, it was still “a terrible call.”
[Click Here To Read More]
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