A timely ringside review of Gervonta Davis taking a knee in the ninth round of his fight with Lamont Roach, which referee Steve Willis did not call a knockdown, was not possible because technical difficulties prevented the New York State Athletic Commission from seeing the footage back in time to make a call.

BoxingScene contacted the New York State Athletic Commission for comment, and they sent back a statement through the Department of State press office explaining that due to the delay, they proceeded with Willis' call in the moment and are continuing to review the situation.

“At this time, the New York State Athletic Commission is reviewing the matter involving Saturday’s match up between Lamont Roach and Gervonta Davis. During the round in question, following the commission’s request for the replay video, there was a technical issue preventing the commission from receiving it within the allotted time for review. Therefore, the referee’s in-ring decision was relied upon and the fight continued. The commission is dedicated to preserving the integrity of combative sports and is committed to working with all promotions and production teams — on behalf of the athletes, officials, and fans – to ensure technical issues do not occur in the future that prevent the delivery of ringside instant replay feeds to the commission’s officials when needed.”

The key part of that response appears to be that technical issues compromised the commission’s ability to accurately assess the replay video in real time. Given the ongoing review and how clearly Davis’ knee touched the canvas, as well as the unambiguity of the rules concerning knockdowns, the commission can best uphold their stated mission by ruling the incident a knockdown.

Davis-Roach ended in a majority draw. Two judges scored round nine 10-9 for Davis – had it been scored 10-8 for Roach, as would be standard operating procedure had a knockdown been called, and all other rounds were scored the same way as on the night, Roach would have won a unanimous decision by scores of 115-112, 114-113, and 114-113.

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.