Best referee ever ???

Yes, his biggest fight Tyson/HolyfieldII!!!

 

Dr James Jen Kin or Gwen Adair.

 

The one thing that always sticks in my craw about Smoger is the Lou Savarese v Lance Whitaker affair. I think it was the 4th round where Whitaker dropped Savarese and Smoger takes up the count. But after the count of '8' you can audibly hear him coaxing Savarese up, something an impartial official has no business doing. And Savarese went on to win the decision. I feel a ref has the right to coax a fight out of two fighters stalling, but in the case of a knockdown - a turning event in a fight - he has no business interfering. I feel something like this is akin to the ref helping one fighter up from the double knockdown of the Wolgast v Rivers fight or a ref interrupting momentum like Tony Perez did in Ali-Frazier II and Chandler-Canizales.

 

Boxing doesn't have too many of them. Mills Lane to me was very good.

A top ten not only has to enforce the rules, he needs to command respect from the fighters too, and for the fans, stay out of the way during the action. Finally he needs to know when to stop a fight.

 

Well Tyson vs Holy 2 was a mega event. Lane quickly took two points from Tyson. When Tyson claimed it was from a punch, Lane called BS , and DQ'd Tyson. Controlling a wild Mike Tyson is no easy task.

These were odd events, I think Lane did a good job with it.

 

Arthur Mercante Sr, and Harry Gibbs.

 

They were odd events, but Lane did not react well. He did not control events, he let events control him. He looked confused and bemused as he finally made the right call, a bite and part of an ear too late.

 

Mike was all ears that night. Lol.

 

Mills Lane is like an actor playing a ref, and he's the star of the movie. I haven't reviewed his whole career but I've noticed him breaking up promising infighting a few times.

It's so much easier to criticize here. I'm trying to think if Frank Cappuccino did anything objectionable or Pat Russell.

 

Stan Christodolou deserves a shout, hope i spelt it correctly.

 

I thought cappuccino let gatt ward 1 go on a little too long when (9th round i think) gatti couldnt even hold his hands up and was taking shots

 

A good ref doesn't draw that much attention like a bad one:
Mercante
I liked Carlos Padilla in the Manilla fight,
Mills Lane
Christodolou was a good shout out.
Smoger

 

Yeah before round 10 when both corners thought it was stopped, both corner's also could be questioned on their decisions.

What I like about it was he was decisive. He decided to preside over a war so he made it the best war he could. The fighters took massive damage but got big paydays way past their prime on the other side with the remainder of the trilogy.

If the fight had been paused every round for the doctor to look at Ward's cut, if the memorable corner moments had been interrupted by the ref coming to explain why he can't let it go on much longer, there would have been similar damage but far less fame and fortune.

Jack Reiss is good at many aspects but I think the amount of this sort of thing he does is counterproductive. It just lets the fighter recover enough to take more damage. If he isn't sure the fighter is ready, then call it. The fans of the winner will be happy, the loser will have an excuse, and everyone else will quickly forget about an early TKO.

 

He was completely incompetent in the Ali-Liston rematch.

 

He handled that pretty good. You just can't disqualify the biggest star in boxing as easily as you think.