I remember bthis disturbing me at the time: the referee of the AJ Pov fight tells the two fighters about blah blah, protect yourselves then, amazingly turns to Joshua and says "Good luck Ant." I don't think there was anything untoward in the actual reffing and perhaps this can be put down to excitement/being star-struck but I think this sort of blatant favouritism needs high-lighting. I'm sure Joshua wasn't impressed. Thoughts?
Your post is fake news. What he says is, "Good luck, lads" (though he is looking at Joshua at the time).
I don’t really care about a bias provided it doesn’t get in the way of his job. Both fighters fought a clean fight and the ref didn’t really have to do anything. If you wanna see disgusting refereeing check out that pos who allowed Wlad to get away with the stuff he did against Povetkin. This is coming from someone who dislikes Povetkin, but wrong is wrong and that guy I think his name was Pabon or something like that allowed some of the most cheating you will see in one fight.
He would know Joshua anyway it is his 5th Joshua fight as referee, infact all of the regular BBBoC/Matchroom refs know him. Steve Gray is one of the better English refs. He was also a judge for the Parker fight (118-110)
Doesn't mean you should wish him good luck in front of his competitor right before they fight doe! (Although, there is disagreement that this actually happened)
With all of the antiRussian sentiment going around the UK, I bet the commission instructed the ref that there would be no British stoppages. That the Russian would take a bit of a beating before it was stopped.
Ref was a non-factor, it was that sort of fight. He let Povetkin have another go after the k/d too, some refs wouldn't.
STFU! You obviously didn't see the ref and Pov in the dressing room before the fight taking shots of Vodka and singing the Russian national anthem!
It was "Good luck, ant." aimed towards Povetkin because the referee had been reading Luis Fernando's posts and knew very well about the ASTRONOMICAL differences between these two fighters.
That referee held Povetkin down when he got dropped the second time, Povetkin would have made the count I'm sure of it. Goddamn pompous bodybuilder, and his crooked officials!
I have a message to relay from some of the braindead AJ haters: "OMG OMG Povetkin got robbed... he should have been allowed to continue, even if he died. Ridiculous referee'ing! Povetking was not hurt at all, he even went through the ropes to tell everyone he is okay but then got back to his feet." End of message.
