By Andrew Wake: With dubious scoring rearing its ugly head in championship fights on what seemed like a monthly basis, 2009 was not a good year for boxing’s decision makers.
A shortlist of the most questionable verdicts from this year naturally included Sergio Martinez only earning a draw with Kermit Cintron despite outlanding the Puerto Rican throughout and flooring him for more than 10 seconds in the seventh, Juan Diaz’s questionable unanimous decision over Paulie Malignaggi in August and Carl Froch’s narrowly retaining his WBC super-middleweight title against Andre Dirrell in October’s first stage of the Super Six series.
But when voting was completed for the 2009 SecondsOut.com ‘Worst Decision of The Year Award’ the unanimous winner (no pun intended) was the recent battle between undefeated Joan Guzman of the Domincian Republic and rangy South African Ali Funeka.
The pair met for the vacant 135 pound IBF title on November 28 in front of 16,500 fans at Pepsi Coliseum in Quebec City, Canada.
On paper it was a very interesting match up. Funeka had only been defeated twice in a career spanning back to 1995 and had run previous lightweight top dog Nate Campbell close in a championship fight earlier in the year, while Guzman, then 29 – 0 (17 KOs), had held version of a world title in both the 122 and 130 pound weight classes and was regarded by some as on the verge of breaking into superstar status.
Indeed, going in Guzman was a clear favourite but Funeka isn’t one for reading scripts and gave the man nicknamed The “Sycuan Warrior” the most punishing battle of his life.
Things did start as planned for Guzman early on as he put the first two sessions in the bag by using excellent speed and movement to roll under Funeka’s blows and get off rapid shots to the body. But in the third the tide noticeably changed as Funeka began doubling his jab into Guzman’s face and had the Brooklyn-based Dominican bleeding profusely from his nose and a nick above the right eye.
Rounds four to six followed a similar trend as Guzman looked befuddled by his foes straight left. The seventh was a competitve affair and it appeared that Guzman might have found his second wind as he finally got close to Funeka and connected to the head and body.
But from the eighth until the final bell Funeka was firmly in control of the action and even had Guzman tottering on unsteady legs at one stage.
HBO’s unofficial scorer Harold Lederman saw it a clear cut 117–111 win for the South African, while commentator Bob Papa said, “Joan Guzman was outboxed by Ali Funeka”, and former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis predicted the official scorecards would be “pretty one-sided” when finally read out. And then the shock came.
|
|
American judge Joe Pasquale had done his job correctly by giving Funeka the verdict by a margin of 116-112 but somehow his Canadian colleagues, Alan Davis and Benoit Roussel, saw it an unimaginable 114-114, thus making it a majority draw and denying Funeka the title his performance deserved.
“It was beyond incompetent judges,” Funeka’s promoter Gary Shaw told SecondsOut’s Jerry Glick afterwards. “The world saw the fight. No one saw Guzman winning. Guzman, at the press conference didn’t even think he won the fight. He admitted that his corner, and Golden Boy wanted to stop the fight“This is one of the worst jobs I’ve ever seen in my history in boxing since 1971. It ranks right up there with Holyfield and Lennox Lewis in Madison Square Garden.”
WINNER: Ali Funeka D.12 Joan Guzman
Previous SecondsOut.com Worst Decision of the Year Awards
2008: Francisco Figueroa w.sd.8 Emanuel Augustus
2007: Jermain Taylor W.12 Cory Spinks
2006: Arthur Abraham W.12 Edison Miranda
2005: Bobby Pacquiao W.12 Carlos Hernandez
2004: Oscar De La Hoya W.12 Felix Sturm
2003: Shane Mosley W.12 Oscar De La Hoya
2002: Johnny Tapia W.12 Manuel Medina
2001: Paulie Ayala W.12 Hugo Dianzo
2000: Erik Morales W.12 Marco Antonio Barrera
|
Subscribe to feed
