Terrible stoppage in Stevens fight

Agreed. I hate it when refs fall for the flurry and assume the shots are doing damage. Johnson was still in relatively decent shape considering he had taken 2 big Stevens hooks.

 

Was abit premature but no way he would survive a minute, Stevens would have loaded up on him, 1 minute to land 2 big punches

 

tureano recovered quickly. ref looked to be paid off. tureano took some hug shots before and nothing

 

everything johnson needed to do was to take a knee and beat the count.
but he was defenseless and taking shots.
unfortunate but can't blame here the ref.

 

people are such idiots here
"he was hurt and probably wouldnt have recovered"

good thing the ref didnt stop the cunningham fight after being knocked down twice by huge shots. had the ref stopped the fight we would have heard "great stoppage, he saved cunninghams life"

heres an idea....when a guy is dominating a fight with under a round left and gets caught with a big shot.....how about let him at least get knocked down once for fuks sake! they robbed this guy big time. shameful

 

this.
i love how every moron on here can predict the future and justify it by saying theres no way he would have survived the round. The ref robbed the guy of the chance to even try.

 

ref probably would have stopped it anyway looked highly suspicious

 

Johnson almost fought the perfect fight.I wonder how the judges had it scored.Johnson looked way better than he was on showbox

 

Johnson recovered quick but it looked bad after he was clearly rocked and then Stevens was wailing on him. i don't blame the ref.

if i had to bet i'd take Stevens to win whereas Froch-Groves i'd still bet on Groves when it was stopped.

 

I do think the ref could've/should've given it a few more seconds to see how Johnson responded, but I'm also realistic- the hook that started it looked every bit the monstrous shot it was on TV, let alone for a guy standing two feet away seeing it as it happened.

Then a couple more shots landed cleanly before Johnson even got to the ropes, where Stevens unloaded with a ton of shots in quick succession. The final flurry on the ropes didn't land, but from the ref's perspective, it was tough to see what was landing and what wasn't.

The whole sequence only took a few seconds; I can't hold it against the ref if I'm putting myself in his shoes with what he saw instead of going by how it looked on TV.

And, oh yeah- a rematch solves everything. I don't know what those warriors made last night, but it wasn't enough. :deal

 

Can't argue with this. I really don't blame the ref all that much. I didn't like the stoppage, and those flurries are designed to do just that, get the ref to stop the fight. I hate that they often get the job done, without doing any further damage, but I don't know how it can be stopped.

 

Stopped to early, but not as absurd as those british stoppages.

 

I don't know, either. Really tough spot because that initial left hook was a brutal one and the follow ups that drove him to the ropes landed cleanly. Include the final flurry on the ropes, and the entire sequence from hook to stoppage only took just over 5 seconds. It looked like he waited until Johnson bent at the waist to call it, not knowing if he was slumping down or coming up.

Tough call. I'd have liked to see it go a touch longer, but if I were the ref, I don't know if I'd been able to hold off calling it myself with how quickly things shifted.

 

wouldn't have mattered much...stevens would've had full leverage of his punches and really hurt the dude....

 

Stevens had like an 80-20 chance of finishing him in the next few seconds, but it was too early. Johnson had come back from getting rocked quite a few times through the fight, he had his hands up and was moving his head and body voluntarily. Basically went out for a sec, realized he was rocked and started to backpeddle, then reached the ropes and went to lean into Stevens when it was stopped.

Ref was clearly biased. Entire fight he kept needlessly shoving Johnson backward when there was a break. That's always a giveaway to me.