Too Many Blows to the Head

And the hits keep coming in. The low blows. Illegal elbows. Cheap shots. And through the unwarranted bludgeoning, one thing is for certain: the boxing world is corrupt. Too much money. Too many shady deals. Too many instance of screwing over the competitors. These past couple of months have been nothing short of a constant barrage of negativity to the world of boxing.

As a first example, let us examine the Christina Linardatou fiasco. As you may recall, Linardatou was slated to enter the ring with Mikaela Mayer for what would have been the WBC interim lightweight title. The opportunity was snatched away from Linardatou by a last minute ruling by the British Boxing Board of Control which declined to license Linardatou for the fight due to failing an eye exam. She failed the eye exam because of a permanent lens. Keep in mind, Linardatou has had this permanent lens her entire professional career. Further, the British Boxing Board of Control had previously licensed her to fight under a previous event back in 2019 against Katie Taylor. And the BBBC failed to notify Linardatou of this decision until the night before the fight, despite knowing for years of Linardatou's "condition". It goes without saying, but this decision was nothing short of pure bull shit.

We can all speculate as to why the BBBC declined to license Linardatou. Here is one theory I have been entertaining lately: they were scared that Mayer was going to lose and lose badly at that. Linardatou may have been the smaller fighter of the two, but she was clearly faster, more agile, more powerful, and the better defense. She would have put on an absolute clinic with Mayer experiencing yet another devastating loss, and with all the attention and money being poured behind Mayer, it would have depreciated Mayer's stock significantly and whatever investments TopRank and others had in her. This was all evident in the lead up to the fight. Training videos posted by Linardatou's camp showed a fighter that was more prepared, disciplined, and overall better than Mayer. But, let's back track one moment to the reason why this fight was even happening in the first place. Linardatou, if you will remember, became pregnant in 2021 and had to give up her titles as a result. Mayer, having just experienced a loss to Baumgardner, was looking to get back some of that positive momentum and rebuild her stock. After giving birth, Linardatou was wanting to do the same. And so, Mayer's camp approached Linardatou knowing full well that as a former champ she would pose enough of a challenge for Mayer to boost her stock in the sport, but also surmising that the pregnancy would have left her weak and just a shell of the fighter she once was. Therefore, they believed it would be an easy fight that would have given Mayer enough of a boost to challenge Katie Taylor for her titles. But then Linardatou's camp began unveiling footage from training camp and everyone could see that Linardatou was probably in better shape than she was before the pregnancy and was just a good as a fighter, if not potentially better. So, the power's that be decided that Mayer neded an easier opponent because they had too much riding on Mayer and, behold, they found this convenient loophole in a permanent lens. Linardatou could be dropped and replaced with Lucy Wildheart and they could keep their investment alive and well.

I fell for Linardatou, after putting all that time and energy into training only to have the fight taken away at the last possible moment. There should have been no reason for that decision to go down like it did, but money talks and boxing is as much of a business as it is a sport. It may have all worked out in the end for Linardatou as she is now slated to fight Alycia Baumgardner in a much anticipated rematch of Baumgardner's only professional loss. This time it will be for the WBO, WBA, WBC, and IBF superfeatherweight titles. I am certainly looking forward to this fight and am hoping Linardatou can repeat her win against Baumgardner.

A couple weeks after the Linardatou decision, their was a fight between Rolando Romero and Ismael Barroso for the WBA super lightweight title. Why Romero was given this fight is anybody's guess. He was coming off of a knockout loss to Gervonta Davis and likely should not have been afforded a title shot off of a fresh loss. The recent loss would have reduced his stock by a good margin, leaving the title to some other more deserving boxer. For Barroso, this was his chance at a title fight that he had been trying to secure for years, and he wasn't even originally given this shot. The only reason he had this opportunity, despite his record which should have been enough, was that Alberto Puello had to pull out of the fight over a failed drug-test.

Barroso is the much older fighter and was expected to loss the fight by a large margin, which would have set up Romero to continue moving forward in the business. Come fight night, though, this is not what happened. It turns out the Barroso, despite his age, was actually as good of a fighter as his resume said he was. He knocked down Romero in the third round and went on to completely outwork and outpunch the younger Romero. In the ninth round, Romero managed to, somehow, get a knockdown through an illegal push. Later in the ninth, Romero had Barroso backed into a corner and swinging wildly. Barroso, with his experience, dodged nearly every single one of those punches and even answered back with a few powerful counters. And then, the referee stepped in and stopped the fight, affording Romero the win. Unbelievable. Romero wasn't hitting on anything. He was down on all the cards. He looked terrible out there against Barroso. Barroso clearly had every chance to get himself out of that corner, maybe knock Romero around a bit more, and win that fight. But it was stolen from him by a corrupt referee. It looks like to me that someone needed Romero to win and since Romero wasn't doing it himself, alternative measures had to be taken. And what did the commission hae to say about this terrible call? Absolutely nothing because, again, Barroso wasn't supposed to be in that fight, let alone fight that well, and they needed to protect their money player.

On the flip-side of that spectrum, there are some referees that seem content on having a competitor die in the ring. Take the Maloney/Nakatani fight, for example. Nakatani dominated throughout the entire fight. That is a bit of an understatement. Perhaps a better term would be to see Nakatani bludgeoned Maloney with a constant barrage of powerful uppercuts, hard straight lefts, and devastating hooks. Maloney found himself on the ground in rounds two and eleven. The knockdown in round eleven was of particular significance. Maloney took a straight left to the chin which sent him falling backwards to the canvas. From there, he struggled to get to his feet. Even on his feet, Malloy looked unsteady. His legs were wobbly. He had a clear dazed look in his eyes. Any competent ref would have stopped the fight then. His corner should have seen the same thing and threw in the towel for the sake of their fighter's health. Maloney had clearly suffered too much damage. Instead, the referee, and his corner for that matter, allowed Malloy to continue to the next round. What transpired in the 12th round was nothing short of a career ending, and very close to life-ending, knockout in the form of a powerful overhand left. That knockout should not have happened. To be honest, for a moment I had considered that I had just witnessed a sanctioned murder. Immediately after the knockout some brilliant mind at ESPN thought that it might be a good time to cut to an above shot of Maloney struggling to live. His right eye was swollen shut with blood pouring out of it. His left eye was looking at the back of his head, most likely at the serious trauma wounds his brain had just suffered. He was struggling to breath, gasping at air like a fish out of water. It didn't look good. Thankfully, Maloney survived and is, I assume, well, but that knockout should not have happened.

Later that night, Devin Haney and Vasiliy Lomachenko took the stage. This was a fight I had been looking forward to and it did not disappoint. Haney was looking to cement his legacy against one of the greater boxers. Lomachenko was looking to get that undisputed status he had been fighting so long to achieve. As the younger fighter, Haney was considered the favorite to win. Myself, I was looking for Lomachenko to emerge victorious. After my first watch of the fight, I had Lomachenko winning the battle 7-5, but I could have seen it easily go to a draw. A second look at the fight and my opinion changed. Lomachenko clearly won every round. There is no doubt in my mind of that. The judges, though, had Haney win the fight with a unanimous decision. Anybody else that saw the fight overwhelmingly disagreed. Boxers, coaches, trainers, people that picked Haney to win the fight all came out saying that Lomachenko was the clear winner. Effectively, Lomachenko was robbed of a victory.

The arguments for Haney winning are mind-numbing. According to his supporters, this fight was for undisputed and in order to win undisputed you have to show demonstrate you are undisputed and that is something Lomachenko did not do. And I would counter with, "and what did Haney do?" His performance was anything but the type of performance you would expect from an undisputed champion. His punches barely connected and when they did they did absolutely no damage because, despite his size advantage over Lomachenko, Haney has absolutely zero power behind his punches. Lomachenko was more accurate, more effective in his punches, and controlled the pace from start to finish. Haney did nothing to show that he was the best fighter. And so, at the end of the night, the true winner went home empty-handed while the loser was gifted the undisputed champion. Those judges had to have been bought and paid for. There is no way a reasonable, uncorrupted person could have seen that fight and scored it for Haney. But why would they give it to Haney? Because again, boxing is a business. Lomachenko is an older fighter with a stellar and long career. How many more fights would he have him? And with what is going on in Ukraine right now? If I was a betting man, I would say that somebody had gotten to these judges. Haney had to win to keep the money flowing the way they needed it to.

The worst part of it all, is that there is no recourse for a boxer to take in light of these terrible decisions. A boxer can appeal, but who are they appealing to? The very same corrupt officials that bought the terrible decision in the first place. The only other thing to do is to keep bringing attention to this kind of b.s. and hope for change. Hope for the corruption to root itself out. Until then, the blows will keep on coming and sport the will continue to suffer.