What's The Worst Refereeing Performance You've Seen?

Mares Agbeko 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mr4LIC6Bj4

 

Hatton vs Mayweather, Cortez again!

 

Walcott in the Ali-Liston II fight.
It doesn't get any worse than that.

 

Mills Lane in the Holyfield-Tyson fight.
Tyson should have been disqualified after the first bite!

 

You could argue that Ian John-Lewis's stoppage of Enzo Maccarinelli against Ovill McKenzie was a touch early. It's pretty cringey to watch back.

 

There was a similar thread on another board recently and this was my reply to that:

I always thought Carlos Padilla was one of the worst refs I ever saw, yet, he always got the plum assignments. Maybe it's just me but i always thought he had the most confused look on his face like he wasn't sure whether or not to stop a fight. And I thought it bled over into a number of his fights over the years. For instance:

1)Danny Lopez-Mike Ayala - you gotta see this to believe it. Padilla counts out Ayala in the 11th, the ring floods with people and then suddenly Padilla consults with the timekeeper and - amid mass confusion - restarts the fight until Lopez stops it for good in the 15th.

2) Ray Leonard-Wilfredo Benitez - a close fight and in the waning stages of the 15th Leonard drops Benitez. Wilfredo gets up and with seconds left Leonard throws 3 punches at Benitez, who ducks all 3 and Padilla stops the fight.

3)Antuofermo-Minter I - Padilla will not allow Antuofermo an inside fight with Minter, constantly breaks them when Vito gets close and cost Vito the title (although I felt Vito still did enough to win). Yet, 3 months later, he allows Roberto Duran an inside fight with Ray Leonard and takes Ray's title.

4)Camacho-haugen I - the pivotal final round and Padilla requsts a touch of gloves. Caamacho stands there with his arm extended and haugen refuses to touch up despite Padilla pleading. Finally - amid mass confusion - having enough of it, Camacho starts the round and starts throwing punches and Padilla laughingly penalizes Camacho, which cost him the fight and his title by a point. The only saving grace was that Haugen tested positive for drugs or something and it was called a ND.

5)Gaby Canizales-Richie Sandoval - this was not so much pivotal on a career but almost on Sandoval's life. A complete contrast to the Leonard-Benitez stoppage.

 

That french ref in the McClellan Benn fight was pretty horrible

 

It does, actually. Critical minute or not, that was just one minute of bad refereeing. (actually 36 seconds between the anchor punch landing and Walcott ultimately waving it off)

In the span of 36 seconds his errors were threefold, and severe:

1. He failed to a) immediately assert control over the situation by positioning himself properly in between the downed combatant and his assailant, b) get Ali to his neutral corner, and c) pick up Francis McDonough's count over Liston. There were a lot of moving parts here (Ali in particular was unhelpful), it was hairy, but that sort of on-a-dime multitasking is something a ref ought to be able to do. A good, experienced, and well-trained ref, that is - which is what they ought to have procured for an important championship rematch. For obvious reasons - indeed, for the very reason that it was a big important event and they wanted to maximize the hype factor - they installed a celebrity ref with precious little experience (not even a dozen bouts officiated) instead. So while his goofs are his own, as he took on the job and had a responsibility to not crumb it up - Walcott was in over his head and should never have been in that position...just in case there was exactly the kind of chaotic situation requiring a cool head and finesse there ended up being. You know, because this is boxing...and that stuff does happen. People in charge needed to have anticipated this, so the lion's share of blame really is more on them.
2. He left the boxers alone, to go converse with McDonough. Dunderhead move, though perhaps well-intentioned. He correctly recognized that he lost control in the initial moments after the knockdown and lost sight of where the count was. He incorrectly reacted by turning his back on two attack dogs with their blood up, trusting in his naivete (really thick-headed considering he was a former pug himself - but, it all happened fast and he clearly wasn't quick-thinking on his feet or cut out for this line of work, as mentioned above) they would simply mill around waiting for him to get back instead of resuming the action - which they oughtn't have done. Ali was in the wrong; Liston was in the wrong. They oughtn't have resumed the action without being instructed to, but really, Walcott should have known better and while they were in the wrong you have to give the men some leeway given the atmosphere, the adrenaline, the very nature of it being a fight. Wacltt should've known, but... Head up his ass, just wasn't thinking, was too focused on fixing his original mistake to avoid exacerbating it - couldn't see the forest for the trees.
3. After realizing that McDonough had essentially done his job for him and kept the count going all the way through completion of "ten", Joe determined the match was over. (we'll give him the benefit of the doubt that it was this and not Fleischer's histrionics that prompted his decision). This sets all kinds of bad precedents. Timekeepers have no investiture of fight-stopping authority, so McDonough doing his own job and, helpfully, Walcott's, while faithful service, oughtn't have resulted in a stoppage. Walcott had missed the boat on stopping it off that knockdown, when he made his previous mistake (the 2nd bullet point, above) of walking away, inadvertently letting the action commence again. You can't retroactively deem someone knocked out by a knockdown from which they've already risen and begun shaking off while actively fighting back. Walcott, doubly in the wrong, both retroactively and emissarilly (that is, on McDonough's nonexistent authority rather than his own - which is different from acting on McDonough's advisement, had they been able to effectively communicate when Liston first rose and before Walcott left him to reengage with Ali) waded into the fray to everybody's confusion, looking most of all confused himself - which makes it perhaps the worst mistake of all, because he completely undermined and confused the role of the referee through his actions.

...but even with all that, not the worst night's work. It was 36 crazy seconds. He was a celebrity ref, in a blink of an eye pressure cooker situation that would test even many seasoned refs' mettle and capacity to act levelly and with aplomb.


Compare with the countless performances of refs who either spent entire affairs - going an entire twelve or fifteen rounds - stifling the action being too involved, not being involved enough looking the other way despite flagrant misconduct, or "stacking the deck" against someone by repeatedly issuing chintzy warnings or deductions for imaginary violations. 36 minutes beats 36 seconds. I'd say every year there are worse instances of poor refereeing (through some flavor of corruption, be it an outright case of graft or even just partiality toward one fighter - or gross incompetence) than poor old Joe turned in that night.

 

Isidoro Rodriguez in the first Coggi-Gonzalez fight, although whether that should be under "most corrupt" rather than "worst" is open to debate.

 

The worst referring jobs are those that endanger a fighter's health and well-being. To that end, I would submit Ruby Goldstein as almost criminal in his handling of Griffith-Paret III.

Ernesto Magana deserves mention for his bloodlust shown in the Duran-Moore fight. It was only Moore's corner that finally decided to step in and save his life. Magana clearly had no intention of stopping it.

 

He was actually Belgian, but still unable to speak English. A complete nonsense when both fighters spoke the language.

 

Frank Santore Jr., Valentine's 2009.

 

Perez and Cortez. Too many to list by these two.

 

Worst I've seen was an amateur match I saw the other day between Beterbiev and another kid named Doritos or something. Ref stops the fight a couple seconds in and declares a knockout. Pro scene, it's hard to do worse than Mares vs Agbeko. There were about twenty uncalled low blows.