IBHOF inductee Graham Houston expresses his bemusement at the astonishing events that took place in Las Vegas on Saturday night as WBA Regular 115lbs champion Joshua Franco somehow escaped with his title in his rematch with Andrew Moloney.
As one gets older, one tries to move with the times. But it is difficult not to yearn, if only occasionally, for the days when things seem to have been, in a word, simpler. I had that yearning after watching the Andrew Moloney vs Joshua Franco fiasco unfold in Las Vegas.
You all know what happened. But, a quick recap. Franco suffered a swelling under the eye after what referee Russell Mora ruled was a head clash and the ringside doctor advised the fight be stopped. The Nevada commission went to instant replay, and after much dithering and delay came to the conclusion that Mora’s ruling had been correct. As four rounds had not been completed, the bout was declared a no decision. (Or no contest, if you prefer.)
The Nevada “replay official” — veteran referee Robert Byrd — and commissioner Bob Bennett seem to be on an island alone in seeing a head clash.
Heads did seem to come together in the fight but, it appeared to me, Moloney’s head made contact with the left side of Franco’s head — and the swelling was under Franco’s right eye. So how in hell could a head clash have caused the swelling?
ESPN commentator Joe Tessitore was adamant that it was punches that caused the damage. Replays showed a stiff left jab connecting from Moloney, and also a left hook. It was the jab that seemed to start the swelling. The left hook worsened it.
While the commission struggled to arrive at a decision, ex-champs Timothy Bradley and Andre Ward, in their role as expert analysts, tried to make sense of it all. Bradley thought Franco might have been accidentally thumbed in the eye. But today’s boxing gloves are manufactured with the thumb attached, to prevent a thumb getting into a boxer’s eye, intentionally or unintentionally.
So, even if the thumb part of the glove made contact with Franco’s eye it would still have to be deemed a legal blow.
How come the commission wasn’t guided by the ESPN commentary? Well, the commission watches the video minus audio, as I understand it, so they would have been on their own in trying to arrive at a decision.
After an agonising 26-minute wait between the conclusion of the contest and an official ruling, the no decision verdict was announced. Franco keeps his WBA super flyweight title and Moloney goes home to Australia minus the championship that he was attempting to regain, having lost a close but unanimous decision to Franco in an upset last June.
I believe that Moloney spent four months away from his family training for this fight. He boxed beautifully in the two rounds the fight lasted. Sure, it was a tough break for Franco to have his eye swelling and closing so early in the fight. But, when all is said and done, it was an even tougher break for Moloney. All that training and sacrifice and to have victory in his grasp only to have it taken away, you have to feel for Moloney.
And this brings me back to that yearning for simpler times. The days when we had eight weight divisions, with one champion or at the most two champions. (Ten weight divisions, of course, if you include junior lightweight and junior welterweight.)
More than this, though. At one time — and it was in the British Board of Control rulebook and maybe still is — the referee’s decision was final.
If the referee made a mistake, well, too bad, we had to live with it.
In the case of a fight being stopped on a cut caused by a clash of heads, well, sorry, if the fighter who suffered the cut was deemed unable to continue, he lost the fight unless the referee believed he had been victim of an intentional butt.
This led to results that were frankly unfair. Going back years, one such example of unfairness came in a European heavyweight title fight in which Brian London was beating Dick Richardson only to suffer a cut from a clash of heads. Richardson got the win on a TKO and an ugly scuffle occurred between the rival factions.
Now, Richardson was known for being “careless” with his head, as we euphemistically put it in those days. Indeed, he was twice disqualified for butting US imports (Cleveland Williams, Mike DeJohn). But the referee didn’t see an intentional butt in the London vs Richardson fight.
Something similar occurred in a fight for the British light-heavyweight title between the Welsh boxer Eddie Avoth and Irish-born south Londoner Young McCormack.
As a young newspaper reporter, I watched that fight from the press gallery at the National Sporting Club, situated in the Cafe Royal in London’s West End, in 1967.
Avoth was completely outboxing the rugged but limited McCormack when heads clashed and Avoth suffered a severe cut over the eye. The referee ruled it was an accidental collision and McCormack won the British light-heavyweight title on a very fortunate seventh-round TKO.
McCormack was the nicest man you could ever meet outside the ring, one of the absolute nicest guys I ever met, but he could be a rough customer inside the ropes and was known for boring in with his head. Indeed, he was disqualified in a rubber match with Avoth for what was then called “illegal use of the head”.
But, and here’s the thing, we knew where we were in those days. If the referee made a ruling, that was it. Sometimes a boxer and his backers were on the right side of the ruling, sometimes not. It was what it was.
Now we are in the age of video review, which is supposed to provide correction in cases where a referee might have erred. Except that it didn’t in the case of the Moloney vs Franco rematch. And if we can’t trust video replay — or, to be more exact, those in charge of interpreting said replay — well, I ask you, what’s the point?
Main image: Mikey Williams/Top Rank.