The World Boxing Association has temporarily suspended boxing judge Carlos Sucre following his scoring of a fight on Saturday night.
Sucre, along with Jesse Reyes and David Sutherland were the three scoring officials for the highly anticipated World super flyweight title unification fight between Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez and ‘El Gallo’ Juan Francisco Estrada.
The rematch lived up to its expectations as both men were non-stop in their punch output rarely pausing for breath or having to be separated from a clinch.
Estrada emerged victorious after the early fight of the year contender. The Mexican picked up his opponent’s WBC world title after being awarded a split decision verdict. Reyes scored the fight 115-113 in favour of Gonzalez while Sutherland had the same score but instead for Estrada. An elephant in the room emerged when Sucre scored the fight 117-111 for Estrada. A seemingly improbable score given the eye-catching work from Gonzalez which led many onlookers to believe he had won more than enough rounds to have his hand raised. It was later revealed that Sucre awarded the final five rounds to Estrada.
The WBA’s Twitter account wrote yesterday evening, “We will temporarily suspend Carlos Sucre, while the Officials Committee evaluates his performance in the Chocolatito-Estrada 2 fight. We will give the judge the opportunity to speak about what happened.”
A statement was later published on their website. President Gilberto Mendoza said, “I sent a temporary suspension while Sucre is heard, because big shows and fights like this one do not deserve the kind of score he gave. His decision was misguided yesterday.”
They added that the process has just started and will inform in due time what the decision will be.