14.04.06 – By Lee Hayes: It’s official. The Nevada State Athletic Commission has made it’s ruling and Floyd Mayweather Jr. has received his purse of 5 million dollars. Zab Judah however will have to await further investigation and a further review of his part in the 10th round brawl that took place after Saturdays fight was delayed when he hit Mayweather low, followed by a vicious, unsportsmanlike clubbing right hand to the back of Floyd’s head..
The Commission has also suspended Floyd’s uncle and trainer, Roger Mayweather for a period of one year. Roger has also received a fine of $200,000.00 US dollars. The commissions official ruling to not disqualify Floyd or hold his purse is based on the fact that the Nevada boxing rule states clearly that it is in the referee’s discretion to disqualify a fighter and referee Richard Steele clearly waved that option when he decided, along with Marc Ratner, to continue the fight.
Let me just quickly say that the following opinions are strong and may be considered “harsh”. They in no means represent the opinions of East Side Boxing, but merely my own.
Some speculated that Floyd’s uncle could receive a lifetime ban and possibly even a larger fine, however, Mayweather’s defense to the commission was that he believed that round 10 had already ended. This seems plausible, since there were only a couple of seconds to go left in the round and referee Richard Steele made no clear intent as to how he was going to handle the fray. Indeed, as Steele himself has since said that he didn’t even see the rabbit punch to the back of Mayweathers head, after the low blow – which seems to me to be a clear sign that Steele should consider hanging them up. Everybody in that entire arena and every person that watched the fight on Pay Per View say the rabbit punch, and Steele was at a perfect angle to see the punch. If Richard is being honest when he says he did not see the punch, than he no longer belongs at the top echelon of referees and some room should be made for newer younger blood to start calling major fights. I personally have always like the unpopular Steele, however every referee, even the best of all time eventually need to be told to step down.
It appears that Steele’s time may have come.
It will be interesting to see how the rest of this unfolds, because Judah’s camp, Don King and a lot of Judah supporters were adamantly trying to force a reversal on the decision to continue the fight, hoping for a disqualification against “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Had that been the decision, boxing would have suffered another great black eye, particularly since Judah didn’t even deserve his belt to begin with, having lost soundly to journeyman Argentinian boxer Carlos Baldimir in his last fight. To have him get another gift belt – particularly after being beaten even more soundly by Mayweather would have destroyed any sense of reputation that the IBF still has left. And that’s not much.
Several members of Judah’s camp are also facing major suspensions, fines and possible further action by a court of law once the follow up investigation takes place. A frame by frame analysis of the entire proceedings will be reviewed and the report will be used to decide how Judah’s camp will be punished.
Personally, I find this completely acceptable and I commend the commission for taking action. I will not however be pleased if Judah’s camp gets away easy. I believe that Joel Judah deserves a much steeper suspension, for feeding Zab advice to foul Floyd in between several of the later rounds – once he had realized his son had no chance of beating Mayweather with skill. I think he deserves a harsher penalty because Roger never even took a swing at anybody in that ring, and after examining the tape it was clear that he was simply vocally venting on the Judah’s for their indiscretion in the ring, and allowed Steele to restrain him following his outburst. When Joel took it upon himself to inflict “street justice” by running across the ring and throwing a right hand punch to the head of the restrained elder Mayweather. I also think that Zab deserves a hefty fine and suspension for taking his fathers advice to purposely give boxing another black eye with the fouls and for joining in his tasteless dad by throwing his own cheap shot in a copy cat wild right hand to Mayweathers chief second, who was blind sided to the punch.
Hopefully some new rules can be instated that prevent boxers from giving out press credentials to every ruffian bodyguard and buddy they can round up. It’s getting worse and worse and it has always clearly been about intimidation. There is no need on earth for a boxer to have 20 members of their “team” walking them in to the ring. If they lack that much confidence, that they feel the need to bring everybody they ever “hung” with on their ring walk, then they are in the wrong sport to begin with and they should consider taking up baseball, or football. They could, since half the time they have enough men to play full court with two teams nowadays.
In my opinion, if Roger deserved a $200,000.00 fine and one year suspension, then Joel should get a minimum of double that fine and suspension and Zab should probably lose his entire purse for bringing his second major black eye to the sport of boxing in coincidently only his second major Pay Per View event. His first being his hissy fit, chair throwing incident following being knocked senseless by Kostya Tszyu. Choking referee Jay Nady, tossing a ring stool, punching our pound for pound greatest fighter low and to the stem of the brain and jumping in on a ring brawl to sucker punch somebody is far more than I need to see from Zab any time soon. If you are reading this and thinking that I’m over reacting, why don’t you review all of the sports programs that followed his fight with Kostya and this recent one with Mayweather. Boxing, which gets nearly no ink time in major newspapers across the globe, and is vastly under played on sports television programs was plastered with Judah’s temper tantrum following the Tszyu fight, giving boxing critics fuel to feed their “ban boxing” crusade. For the second time Zab has fed the fuel, because nobody on any major sports channel or newspaper in my area even commented on the fight itself, or how great Mayweather looked in dominating Judah. In fact, none of them seemed to even know who Floyd was. That didn’t stop article after article and news clip after news clip of the Judah’s storming the ring like the thugs they try to perpetrate themselves as. The video clips played for three days in my area, and almost everyone of them was followed up by a smart ass remark about how crazy boxing is. Two of them made references to Mike Tyson’s bite on Evander Holfyield’s ears from their second bout.
Zab has scored two career defining knock outs inside the ring, and unfortunately for we the boxing fans and the sport itself, the only damage his blows have inflicted have been black eyes on the sport we love. It’s about time we put a stop to it before something even more serious happens. There has been no indication that it’s going to get any better. Watch a replay of his ring entrance and tell me that this type of action and mentality were not intentional. It’s the image he wants to portrait, and as boxing fans we have a responsibility to boycott his future fights so that his only chance to be a street thug is right where it belongs. On the street.
This writer welcomes your productive comments/suggestions: