WEEKEND WRAP: Diaz-Katsidis; Juarez-Barrios; Prescott-Khan

Looking back at last weekend, we had controversy and a stunning upset.

The controversy was in the scoring of the Juan Diaz-Michael Katsidis lightweight title fight in Houston and, to a lesser extent, the perceived hometown bias in favour of Rocky Juarez in his 11th-round win over Jorge Barrios.

In the upset, Amir Khan’s shocking blowout by Breidis Prescott was the big talking point in the U.K.

I wanted to get the scorecards on the Houston fights before commenting.

Let me say right away that I thought Katsidis fought well against Diaz. The Aussie did some good punching to the body and I thought he made the last several rounds quite difficult for the “Baby Bull”.

No way, though, did Katsidis win the fight. The split decision in favour of Diaz was startling — it should, of course, have been unanimous.

HBO’s Max Kellerman was as usual outspoken, declaring: “This was one of the worst jobs of scoring I’ve ever seen.”

Harold Lederman, HBO’s unofficial official, had it 118-110 in favour of Diaz, which seemed fairly close to what had transpired in the bout. Yet judge Levi Martinez had Diaz up by just 115-113 while Washington state judge Glen Hamada somehow saw Katsidis the winner, 115-113, with Texas judge Gale Van Hoy appearing closer to the mark with 116-112 in Diaz’s favour.

Hamada had Katsidis sweeping the last five rounds. In fairness to Hamada, the other two judges agreed with him in two of these rounds, and he was on the same page as one other judge in two other rounds. In his scoring of the last five rounds, only in round nine was Hamada on his own in giving the round to Katsidis.

I did think the closing rounds were much tighter than the earlier ones, but Diaz still seemed to be doing most of the effective scoring, especially with his stiff left jab.

The tone of Michael Buffer’s voice when he announced “We go to the scorecards ...” indicated that something was up. It was the tone of voice Michael uses when he is about to read off scores that are going to surprise people, his “You’re not going to believe this” tone of voice.

At least the right man won, but for just a moment I feared we were going to be witness to one of those travesties of justice that have been happening too often in boxing lately.

As for Juarez-Barrios, it did seem that referee Rafael Ramos was unduly heavy-handed in his constant warnings to Barrios, while taking away two points for what seemed borderline body blows appeared extremely harsh.

A look of despair seemed to come over Barrios when the second point was deducted, and this may have been why he departed from his surprisingly effective style of boxing and moving and instead threw everything he had at Juarez in the 10th, a wild-swinging assault that served only to exhaust him and leave him vulnerable for Juarez’s strong counter attack.

I disagreed with Harold Lederman on this one. It was a close fight for 10 rounds but, with two points taken from Barrios, I had Juarez up 95-93 coming out for the 11th. His blows were cleaner and harder, and he seemed to be blocking a lot of the Argentinean’s punches.

Maybe, without the flow of cautions directed against him, Barrios could have done a better job of staying focused and maintained the sort of style that would have taken him to a decision win, but I doubt it. I picked Barrios, but I did think that Juarez was the more effective fighter, and he was coming on strongly. Barrios might have made it to the final bell had it not been for the terribly cut mouth that terminated proceedings with five seconds remaining in the 11th, but Juarez was poised to have a huge last round against a fading opponent.

Khan’s 54-second defeat against Prescott took everyone by surprise. The unbeaten lightweight was seen as an emerging superstar in Britain.

Fighters such as John Ruiz, Julio Diaz and Duke McKenzie won world titles after suffering first-round KO defeats. Karl Mildenberger was knocked out in one round by Dick Richardson but later gave Muhammad Ali a good fight before being stopped in the 12th round. Anyone can get caught cold. This was a dreadful setback, though.

I had seen Prescott — his close win over Richard Abril — and thought he would be too slow for Khan. Yet Khan went out and stood right in front of the Colombian. It was worrying to see Khan appear to wobble from a left jab, before the heavy hooks and right hands blasted him out of the fight. He is talented but he just doesn’t seem able to take a punch anywhere above the neck, which is going to prove a constant problem, especially as he likes to go in and let his hands go, and be exciting, rather than box a safe, speedy hit-and-move fight.

Khan is only 21 and all is not lost, but his promoter, Frank Warren, is going to have to use great matchmaking skill to bring him back and keep him moving forward. It can be done, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of margin for error.