TOP RANK CEO Bob Arum says he shook his head when Adalaide Byrd was appointed as one of the judges for Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez’s World middleweight title fight with Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Byrd and the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) who appointed her have come under heavy public scrutiny after Byrd’s nonsensical 118-110 scoreline in favour of the Mexican rendered the compelling contest a draw.
Though Golovkin was the consensus winner, the result in itself was no disgrace; this was an extremely close fight in which both men dominated for spells, which made Byrd’s scorecard – 10 rounds to two in favour of Canelo – all the more unfathomable to onlookers, Golovkin, and even Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya during Saturday night’s fallout.
Speaking to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Arum revealed that Top Rank had previously pleaded with the NSAC to have Byrd removed from several high-profile fights, most recently Vasyl Lomachenko’s stoppage victory over Nicholas Walters last November.
“We have a whole history with Adalaide Byrd, who I like very much. She’s a wonderful person, but her scorecards have been in many cases been off the wall,” he said.
The complaint [to remove her from some Top Rank fights] wasn’t that she was against us or that she was prejudiced in any way. The complaint was she wasn’t a good judge, and the we thought, it wasn’t appropriate to have her because we didn’t have any confidence in her ability to judge.
However, in spite of Arum and Top Rank’s frequent complaints, Byrd was assigned to Saturday’s middleweight mega-event, which was co-promoted by his rivals Golden Boy and K2. She frankly made a balls of it.
Somewhat unusually for Arum, he had sympathy for his competitors, but none for NSAC head Bob Bennett, who has since been forced to step Byrd down from major fights in light of the outrage regarding her preposterous scoring of Canelo-GGG.
“This what they get,” Arum said. “He [Bob Bennett] had to know that she had some very questionable scorecards in the past. He had to know that because we told him.
“It’s the arrogance that they know everything. They think that we are the peasants that care for nothing other than making a buck, and therefore, they’re not going to pay attention to anything we have to say.”
Speaking last year in relation to Lomachenko-Walters, Top Rank Vice President Carl Moretti told BoxingScene of 20-year judging veteran, Byrd: “We respectfully requested that Adalaide Byrd not be assigned to this fight.
“From there it went on to a conversation [with Bob Bennett] about how she is a good judge.
“Some judges can have good nights and can have bad nights. But when she has bad nights, she seems to be too far away from the score.
“Bob defended her left and right. He didn’t wanna listen to our objection.”
On Saturday night, judge Dave Moretti [not to be confused with the aforementioned Carl Moretti] scored the bout 115-113 in favour of the still-undefeated Golovkin, while Don Trella scored it 114-114 to create the split-decision draw. However, across the five rounds that Moretti and Trella both scored for Golovkin, Byrd gave the nod to Alvarez in each.
It’s worth noting, too, that Trella scored round 7 in favour of the Mexican star – a farcical and indeed brow-raising oversight, given Triple G’s domination of the stanza.
Had Trella scored the round correctly, Byrd’s scorecard would have been rendered moot, and Golovkin would have emerged with a split-decision victory.
There would have been a rematch in any case, of course, and we’re likely to see it on Cinco de Mayo (5 May) weekend next year.
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