ABNER MARES W12 (maj.) JOSEPH AGBEKO

Great fight, pity about the refereeing.  Russell Mora, normally a sound official, had a bad night last night in his handling of the thrilling bantamweight title bout on Showtime that saw Abner Mares, aided by what appeared to be benevolent refereeing, defeat Joseph Agbeko by majority decision.
 
There was no real argument about who had scored the greater number of points. The computer statistics showed that Mares had thrown and landed more punches and landed more power punches — a “power” punch being anything other than a jab.
 
The controversy, of course, comes from the number of low blows that Mares landed without penalty and specifically from the blatantly low left hook in the 11^th round that had Agbeko sinking to the canvas and which was ruled a legitimate knockdown blow by the referee.
 
The 11^th round incident was crucial. Agbeko was coming on strongly, but the knockdown ruling switched a likely 10-9 round for Agbeko to a 10-8 round for Mares. While Mares might have won the bout in any case — and he fought and boxed well in the 12^th — what would otherwise have been a tremendous victory over a very tough and worthy champion is now clouded in controversy.
 
OK, so how did Mora miss the low blows? The referee did caution Mares throughout the fight. However, he was also cautioning Agbeko for pulling his opponent’s head down, causing blows to stray south of the border. Fair enough, except that several low blows occurred when Mares’s head wasn’tbeing pulled down.
 
A referee has to be careful when it comes to deducting points, though. If a referee starts penalising a fighter early in a bout, the complexion of the fight is changed. For instance, Vic Drakulich jumped right on Edison Miranda in Miranda’s fight with Yordanis Despaigne, deducting two points in the first three rounds. With seven rounds to go and Miranda looking desperate, a low-blow disqualification was virtually inevitable because Drakulich had put himself into a no-going-back situation.
 
So, I think that Mora was stretching the boundaries of leniency by not taking a point from Mares. There were a few blows to the back of the head from Agbeko that drew just mild censure from Mora. I think that Mora didn’t want to get involved in taking points and to an extent let the fighters fight, but in so doing he allowed Mares in effect to have an unfair advantage because there werea number of low blows, which I believe were accidental in nature, and of course the deduction of a point was surely warranted: Getting banged in the hips and below the waistline surely wasn’t doing Agbeko much good.
 
Agbeko was too tough and too proud to drop to the canvas in apparent agony in the manner of, say, Despaigne against Miranda or Zab Judah against Amir Khan. He just kept on fighting. In the 11^th round, though, even the extremely tough fighter from Ghana was unable to remain upright after the most violent low blow of the fight.
 
How did Mora, who was so close to the boxers, miss the low blow that everyone else saw? Here is my guess. If a boxer suffers a cut during a fight, every so often the referee will take a quick look to make sure that the damage isn’t worsening — usually just a glance. Mares had been cut from a clash of heads and it seemed to me that Mora was looking at Mares’s eye at the exact-same moment that the errant left hook was released. Only Mora knows precisely what occurred, but my guess is that he didn’t actually see the low blow.
 
If Mora had intentionally allowed Mares to get away with a low blow — one that might even have been fight-changing — do you think for a moment that he would have consented to an immediate post-fight interview with Showtime’s bullying interrogator Jim Gray?
 
I believe that Mora would have helped himself when, having seen the incident on the slow-motion replay, he had admitted a human error.
 
After all, when Kenny Bayless blew a knockdown call in the Manny Pacquiao vs Shane Mosley fight he admitted his mistake as soon as he saw the replay and immediately apologised to Pacquiao, who had been pushed over and now has a “knockdown” on his record that wasn’t a knockdown.
 
In the case of Pacquiao-Mosley, the missed call wasn’t crucial to the fight’s outcome because Pacquiao was winning in a landslide. Unfortunately for Mora, the missed low blow in Round 11 couldhave affected the final result last night. Had Mora taken a point from Mares in the 11^th and given Agbeko time to recover, who can say for sure what would have happened? A 10-8 round in favour of Mares would have become either a 9-9 round or a 10-8 round in Agbeko’s favour. My instinct is that Mares would still have dug down and gritted out the win, with the finishing post in sight, but we will never know.
 
Far less controversial was Mares getting the benefit of a somewhat questionable knockdown call in the first round when an off-balance Agbeko got clipped by a glancing left hook as he plunged face first into the lower ropes, but no one is arguing about that — it was a judgement call, just like Ian John-Lewis ruling that Jean Pascal had twice slipped to the canvas in the rematch with Bernard Hopkins: Even Bernard, with considerable good grace, admitted that a punch-or-slip ruling was 50-50 in each instance.
 
All the commotion over low blows has overshadowed a marvellous fight, with skill, heart and determination displayed on both sides.
 
Some of Agbeko’s jabbing was masterful — the jab was slamming Mares’s head back at times. Mares showed a great chin when absorbing a huge right hand in the fourth round — his knees buckled but he kept his footing.
 
I think that Agbeko was waiting a bit too long in some rounds, looking to bring over the big right and allowing Mares to steal rounds with bursts of punches.
 
It was a fight that lived up to all the high hopes we had for it, but sadly it will be remembered more for the way it was refereed than for the high quality of the contest.