Does Referee Richard Steele get a bad rap? I remember for several years post Chavez vs BTaylor I,... he was booed by the crowd at the mention of his name. I know another referee of the same era said: "I am not going to get anyone killed in one of my fights". Joe Frazier once said about the 2nd JQuarry fight: "I didn't want to hit Jerry anymore...but the referee (not Steele) waved me back in". Comments on Steele as a referee.
Sometimes a fight will almost break your heart...I felt so bad for Meldrick Taylor losing that fight with Chavez, after he had fought his heart out...I never held it against Steele though...he knew the end of the round was close...but how close? If he would have let it go on...it might have been fatal. A ref in that instance has to do what he thinks is right in that split second of time. That's how I feel about it...good question.
A lot of people put money on Taylor, and were very bitter about what happened. That is not Steele's problem, he did his job; there is nothing more dangerous in this sport than a brave ref...
I have always felt the same way about all the above. Taylor vs Chavez was a heart breaker but I've never held Steele accountable.
Yeah..I remembered Joe Louis later...I saw that Frazier fight on Closed Circuit....but can't remember who else was on the card.
I think it was a combination of Taylor and then the Tyson vs Ruddock 2 stoppage and then having it revealed that his wife worked for Don King. It was not a good look.
Steele for years was regarded as the best ref in the game. Taylor-Chavez was one of those fights...someone was always going to walk away crying about the ending... I think Steele made the right call if we apply the letter of the law. Of course, there was the issue of only 2 seconds left of the round, but what can be said about that? Steele could not have known exactly how much time was left. I think the fight, as mentioned above, which really soiled his reputation was the first Tyson-Ruddock fight. Ruddock's camp protested Steele's appointment as referee for that fight, and to be frank, considering how it was stopped, they seemed justified. Ruddock was in trouble and Tyson looked set to end it, but Steele never even really looked at Ruddock properly and actually had his back to Ruddock when he halted Tyson. Considering that Ruddock had a good round 6 and that it was a pretty entertaining fight, one where Tyson didn't have it all his own way, it seemed like a premature stoppage. Then one remembers that both Tyson and Chavez were King fighters and that Steele allegedly had some ties to King, then it's only natural that many folk started to strongly question his integrity.
Taylor suffered a broken eye socket, broken ribs, badly busted up face, had a lot of blood pumped from his stomach, was ****ing blood for weeks and was in hospital for almost 2 weeks following the Chavez fight. :hi:
