I noticed that in some bouts, a knockout is so extreme that the ref doesn't even bother to count. Mike Tyson's knockout of Larry Holmes and Marciano's KO of Joe Louis are two examples of this. When the final knockout occured in both bouts, the ref just stopped it. Didn't even bother to count. I guess my question is...is it up to the ref to make that call? Do they have the right to just stop it if someone is brutally knocked out and ignore giving a ten count? If that's the case, then they should have just stopped it when Walcott got knocked silly by Marciano in the first fight. The ref was bent over Jersey Joe, counting him out, but it was obvious that Walcott was not going to get up. What other fights had knockouts where the ref ignored giving a ten count?
Yes they have the right to stop the fight, and there has been plenty of mistakes as well. In the case of Tyson, Holmes had been dropped hard and was reeling pretty badly around the ring. The way he was finally knocked out was pretty clear Holmes was not going to get back up.
Most fights today. If the fighter is knocked out cold, the referee usually calls the fight off instantly. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cb5NsR1xng[/ame] It was less frequent in the past. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJtGoVWYzUA[/ame]
Many times the ref will stop a fight, like when a fighter is obviously knocked cold...and it's a "tko", but actually there's nothing technical about it. I think that, in boxing lore and tradition, and among certain referees, there's some veneration given to the "knockout" so that the ten count is formally tolled over an unconscious fighter, even if there's not a chance that he'll beat the count..a traditional "closure" ( I hate that term)..so to speak, letting a "knockout", a clean, conclusive "knockout" be a "ko" instead of a "tko".
Joe Cortez insisted on completing the ten count when Herol Graham was out to the tune of ten thousand against Julian Jackson.