After some negotiating and a little controversy, the referee for the big Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez return fight has been confirmed: Benjy Esteves will be the third man in the ring in Las Vegas. Also, the three scoring judges have been announced: Dave Moretti, Steve Weisfeld and Glenn Feldman will score the massive rematch.
Dan Rafael of ESPN.com reports how Tony Weeks was rejected by Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler. The reason for this is Abel Sanchez, trainer of Triple-G, had a problem with Weeks ahead of a fight between Denis Shafikov (who Sanchez trains) and Rene Alvarado:
“Tony was giving the prefight instructions in the dressing room, and Abel was trying to clarify something,” Loeffler told ESPN following the commission meeting to decide the referee for September 15. “The gist of it was Abel didn’t agree with some of the instructions Tony was giving, so he didn’t feel comfortable with Tony in this fight. When Abel voiced that to me last night, I told Eric, and I made it clear to the commission that we have nothing against Weeks. If they want to assign him to a different fight on the show, no problem. It was just the [main event] Abel had a problem with.”
Finally, and to cut a long story short, Esteves was unanimously appointed by The Nevada Commission and Loeffler, and Eric Gomez of Golden Boy, both say they have no issues with this. For Esteves, this upcoming super-fight will mark the very first time he has worked a fight involving either Canelo or Golovkin.
The three scoring judges brought up no issues of concern on either side and hopefully we will now get nothing but a great, controversy-free world middleweight title fight next month, with a clear winner decided either way.
Esteves, despite never having worked a GGG or Canelo fight before, is a very experienced third man, having worked fights involving big names such as Arturo Gatti, Naseem Hamed, Felix Trinidad, Kevin Kelley, Floyd Mayweather Junior, Bernard Hopkins and Shane Mosley.