Look, Usyk won that fight...Chavez-Taylor all over again.

Bro, Rico got blasted with a vicious uppercut and face planted through the ropes. Then when the ref tried to put his mouthpiece back in, the dude spit it out. When the action resumed he sat in the corner and just ate shots. The time left in the round doesn't matter. The ref thought Rico was out of it and so he stopped it. It's his call. That's the way boxing works. It's always the refs call when to stop a fight.

 

Never throws a punch back. Eats two left straights, a left hook, a right hook, a left uppercut, and then two more right hooks as the ref jumps in. That video makes the stoppage look even more legit! This ain't a Parker/Wardley deal where Wardley is whiffing every punch. Usyk misses one right rook in that entire sequence, that's it.

 

Yeah, I am not really sure what the point of that was.

 

...and here are the excuses pouring in

 

You can't male an excuse for a victory.

 

Awful stoppage

 

He was nowhere near hurt enough to justify that stoppage, especially as the bell went. He spit the mouthpiece out specifically to get to the 12th round as he was rocked.

 

You take me back to Tszyu/Judah, similar but different, and the fighter attacked the ref for saving him. Was that rage at losing or CTE related rage though? We don't find out until they die.

The ref is aware that the bell is about to go, but has gone into that fight with clear ideas of what he will allow in a boxing ring, and the damage that Verhoeven was sustaining, after a very heavy knockdown that would have stopped many, was more than he was prepared to overlook. Sad as you say, but expected, with brain trauma a huge topic in any contact sport.

 

Judah looked like a drunken deer after that shot from Kostya and fell all over the ring, but he had the ability to protest and proceed to go berserk and try to strangle Nady with a hand wrapped in a boxing glove. So you could say he was good to go, the problem was he couldn't control his body for a while before that.

 

Horrific stoppage in a high drama fight

I don’t care what the books say, the boxing world is livid over the stoppage

 

But it was as perfectly good stoppage according to the rules boxing, just as I have described.

 

It wasn't.

 

He got up from a knockdown and was not defending or answering. Good stoppage.

 

okay buddy

 

There was definitely reason for stopping it, but it's whether it was enough to justify stopping it at that point. You can break it down to the man was hurt and in distress but it's always a sliding scale with stoppages. Most think the ref jumped in early. If he hadn't spat the gum shield out it wouldn't be a question as Usyk would've pummeled him. Imo he looked fine enough to sit on the stool for a minute and ref could look at him coming out the corner and tell Peter Fury, if he doesn't show anything early in this round I'm calling it.