Greatest ever referee !

Goldstein? Who let Johansson beat on a defenceless Patterson and was unable to stop Griffith from beating Paret to death?

 

Steve Smoger is hands down the best referee in the history of the sport in my opinion.

I always felt Mercante Sr was a bit of a cheat, Mercante Jr, too involved. Steele was flat out horrible, as is Jay Nady.

Frank Cappucino and Mills Lane were very good.

 

Many good ones.
Three not mentioned yet
Cristodoulou
Neuman
Gibbs
What was the name of the referee who Killed himself ?
I liked his officiating .

 

Mercante actually taught seminars on how to properly referee a match. He also had an innovative system for scoring rounds, dividing them into thirds to negate the last minute theft of rounds used by clever fighters to steal scoring. It's difficult to imagine he'll be surpassed. As prominent a fixture as he was in major fights, he somehow managed to largely evade the controversies which sometimes plagued the likes of Tony Perez and Carlos Padilla. He had the knack of being at once commanding and discreet. He could also bridge language barriers in maintaining effective control. I think one mark of a great referee is that he blends in, and does not draw attention from the competitors. It was easy to forget Mercante was the referee. I can't see him being surpassed. He didn't need to tell fighters to break on his verbal command. They just did.

The greatest active referee in my view is IBHOFer Stanley Christodoulou. His explanation of the precise criteria he used to stop Pryor-Arguello I when he did is one of the most extraordinarily articulate accounts of such a judgment ever described on camera, nearly perfect. (I will make no effort to repeat it from distant memory. There's no substitute for the footage of him expressing it for himself.)

Early in his career, Mills Lane was superb, and he managed Holmes-Cooney with excellence, but eventually, his personality and celebrity began to overshadow his officiating. Larry Hazzard was entirely too energetic, physical and distracting for my tastes. (He is not newly enshrined in the IBHOF exclusively as a referee though.) To a lesser extent, that was also something of an objection I had to former Globetrotter Zack Clayton.

Frank Cappuccino is somebody I've always appreciated a great deal. No serious injuries have ever resulted from a match he's officiated, yet he's known to let a boxer fight his way out of trouble, and command the proceedings by voice alone. A great old school guy.

Willie "The Worm" Monroe has officiated numerous televised bouts since retiring, and is always acknowledged to the crowd by the ring announcer prior to a bout, yet he disappears once the action is underway. It's said that you can identify a well dressed man by not being able to recall what he was wearing after you leave him. As a referee, I think Willie answers well to that accolade.

Cappuccino and Monroe articulate what I believe to be the biggest challenge with naming top referees. Trying to see the invisible. It's thus largely based on a negative, a tricky task.

 

Mercante also kept himself in very good trim, so he could keep abreast of the action. I recall a big fat ref was it Joe O' Neill ? He could hardly move.

 

Mitch Halpern. He was pretty good too as is Randy Newman

Joe Cortez isnt bad either, but hes not a very nice person to meet.

 

Thanks, I mentioned Newman, did I spell his name wrong ?

 

Oh I didnt catch that. Not sure how its spelled.

 

I suspect you are referring to Richard Greene, who was indeed a fine referee. He never recovered from the Mancini-Kim tragedy, despite the fact it occurred as the result of a single punch. This wasn't Lew Eskin ignoring ringside calls of "Stop the fight!" during Scypion-Classen, or Ruby Goldstein freezing in the headlights 18 years earlier during Griffith-Paret III. A one punch fatality, whether it be Mancini-Kim or Pintor-Owen could happen at any time to anybody. (Officiating just his 12th professional match, Marty Denkin waved his arms to stop Pintor-Owen before Johnny even landed that final time, as soon as he saw the eyes roll up in the head. Unlike poor Greene though, Denkin recovered after a two year hiatus to referee for over two more decades.)

Not only is Randy Neumann a fine referee, but he did some rare broadcast color commentary during the 1980s, and was professional enough behind the mike that he probably could have pursued that farther if he was so inclined.

 

I remember O'Neil, and he wasn't the only one. Veteran referee Rosario Baillargeon was overweight and 76 years old when he refereed Gaeton Hart-Cleveland Denny III in Montreal on the undercard of Duran-SRL I. Winded and exhausted, he was unable to get between Hart and Denny during that fatal final assault, and was actually waving off the action while still behind Hart's back. Much editorializing about that tragedy expressed that referees needed to be athletes as well as the competitors. Larry Hazzard exemplified this more demanding ideal, and I imagine the networks felt much safer with him in the ring during their live telecasts.

 

I'm always willing to cut slack for a one time meeting, as most of us have bad days or can be caught in a lousy mood in an unguarded moment. We can't all be "on" 24/7. It's the pattern of behavior I'm looking out for.

 

I sat next to him on an airplane once. Hes from Puerto Rico and I go down there often. I found him to be very arrogant, but I think hes a good ref. He wears more gold chains than Mr T.

 

Richard Steele for me, and older name I always liked was Sid Nathan.

 

Thanks for the info. Vanity certainly would seem to be something of an issue, especially considering he has to remove all that bling to get through the airport detectors.