Referee's count on Linares started at 7 . . .

First of all, I'm not taking anything away from Lomachenko. He landed a crippling body shot that forced Linares down to a knee. A shot like that hurts and you go down immediately to recover. Linares did the smart thing, which was use the entire 10 count to recover and get up at the last possible second.

Well he didn't get the full count so he could know how much time he had to stay down until he had to get up. All he heard was "siete" when in his mind he was expecting to hear "uno" or at least "dos" "tres" etc... Starting a count at 7 is absurd as that leaves a fighter who is hurt no time to prepare to get up. When you're down in that kind of pain you lose track of time and you need the ref's full count to guide you. Hearing "siete" out of nowhere caused him a greater sense of urgency and it caused him to stand up before he was ready.

And again hearing "siete" first instead of "one" (or at least "two", "three" etc) was due to Lomachenko's movement following the knockdown causing the ref to be preoccupied with Lomachenko, I think you get my point, that fighters not going to the neutral corner right away is penalizing the wrong person, the downed opponent, instead of the fighter who didn't go to the neutral corner.

That's why the 1927 rule was better, it penalized the right fighter for not going to the neutral corner because it stated the ref had to wait until the fighter gets to the neutral corner before starting the count at 1. As it is now, if you score a knockdown, you might as well just not go to the neutral corner, because there's no penalty, in fact, not going to the neutral corner makes it harder for the downed opponent to know how much time he has to get up, so you might as well just fist pump and do 360s around the downed opponent.

If refs didn't start the count until the fighter got into the neutral corner, then fighters actually have an incentive to go to the neutral corner, instead of now where there is none. (in fact there's the opposite)

 

I think we'd have a long long list lol, but I would like to study what prompted some of the rule changes and why they got away from what they established as the rule as it was in 1927.

 

He was up at the count of 9. Counting to 10 wouldn't have made sense since Linares was on his feet. He was hunched over leaning forward but clearly standing. At that point since he was on his feet, the ref couldn't only waive it off for the TKO.

The ref actually grabbed a hold of Linares and kind of pulled his upper body up to examine him, which in effect sort of forced the ref to waive the fight off since the ref isn't supposed to grab the fighter or lift him up in any way.

I agree that Linares had more than 10 exact seconds to get up from the moment he took a knee, but that is not uncommon. And it just goes to show that even with the supposed rule of using the ringside counter to keep the count while the ref is distracted the ref said siete about 9 full seconds after the knee hit and waived it off about 14 seconds after he went down. (by the way the camera angles of the knockdown were poor but I didn't see the ref actually look for the ringside counter to pick up his count, he may have, but due to the camera angles you couldn't see it)

So though the 7,8,9 were slower than 1 second per count, that's not a problem, the count can be a little slower as the ref can count at whatever interval he choose to. I mean, look at pro wrestling, you see different refs count to 10 at different intervals. Some refs count fast, others count slow. Similarly in boxing, every ref has different internal clocks and cadences. You look at the Tyson Douglas ref, he counted slower than 1 second per count. This idea that refs should just count as fast as possible or that it has to be exactly 10 seconds from the moment a fighter hits the canvas or else is getting a little ridiculous. Throughout history we've seen plenty of example of supposed long counts and it's part of the sport's history because human error is involved in refereeing.

 

The ref should not have grabbed Linares by the arms and pulled his upper body up after he was already standing. He's not supposed to do that. At that point he should have asked him if he wanted to continue and pulled on his gloves to see if Linares gave him resistance.

As far as the count needing to match seconds exactly, that's not a requirement. The speed at which the ref counts is independent of the time elapsed. There is no official clock that determines when a fighter is knocked out. It is solely the referee's count (at whichever speed he counts at) that determines when a knockout occurs. Also the fact that it took 9 seconds from when Linares went down for him to reach siete only furthers that point and puts into question the idea that his count was being guided by a ringside counter who would supposedly be keeping a more accurate count time. The fact that the ref seemed to just arbitrarily say "siete" at about 9 seconds after Linares went down seems to be closer to what I said about the ref counting non verbally in his head and approximating after he was done getting Lomachenko to a netural corner than checking with the ringside counter to pick up the count at 7. (but again due to the camera angles it's unclear if he looked at a ringside counter or not)

 

Yeah, and I'm just pointing out the inconsistency here. If the instructions instruct refs to pause the count mid-way if a fighter is not in the neutral corner, then why shouldn't the count be paused as well prior to the fighter reaching the neutral corner to begin with? After all, that was how the rule was stated it was supposed to be in 1927 when neutral corners were formally introduced. That's how it was applied in Dempsey Tunney. This is central to my original point how somehow from 1927 till now we got to a point where counts just get started automatically regardless of when the fighter goes to the neutral corner which seems to be contrary to the way the rule was originally intended and introduced into boxing in 1927.