Steve Smoger

No, agani the ref is the first line of defense. If a fighter is out on his feet, it is the refs job to stop the fight instead of letting him take more punishment, not the corner, they are the safety valve, and at least in NYC we know the corner can not even stop the fight.

 

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Bit of a insight from Steve Smoger himself when it comes to the RJJ vs Lebedev fight and i have to agree with the man.

"Now, the difficult part… Towards the end of the last round, Roy is circling and he circles into a neutral corner. I position myself to the side and he seems to be parrying the punches and then there’s a very significant flurry by Lebedev. Roy is down in a semi-crouch and he gets hit with a right uppercut. Now, I want you to grasp this. This is not Pavlik-Taylor I where I could see that he’s out. He was in a defensive posture. His hands were never down, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. His senses were such that he could still keep his hands up. I saw the delivery of a significant shot. It was a short right hook. And after the delivery of that punch I jumped in.

People have asked me, why the last shot? Why didn’t you go in? But see, there are two sides to the coin. Imagine if I had stopped it and he was just playing possum. There would have been a firestorm! This wasn’t Chavez-Taylor, because I didn’t have eye contact with him. I couldn’t see his face. And up until that point, it’s a competitive round. He was in a defensive posture and I was on his left. And when Lebedev delivered that last shot, I stepped in. He was out from the uppercut, but I couldn’t see it. His hands were up. He’s on his feet. The ropes weren’t holding him up. And that’s the same posture he was in when he landed his two best punches of the fight. Hands up with the rabbit ears, and he fires out of it, surprising everyone.

After the fight, Roy came up to me and said, “Steve, can you believe he got me with one second to go?” And I didn’t say anything. I just smiled, because I was relieved that he was up and walking again. His team thanked me afterward. Lebedev did as well."

 

So he was out of position and used that as an excuse of why a defenseless fighter was allowed to take more punishment?

 

Just out of curiosity but how do you rate Joe Cortez?

 

Cortez is worse, mainly because he is inconstant, doesn't allow in-fighting, isn't in control of what happens in the ring, and seems to play favorites for the "house" fighter. That and completely inept.

 

Now you are just being dense. With the rabbit ears the only 'correct' position would have been between the combatants. Switch to the tennis network.

 

Ok fair enough seems like we are in complete agreement here.
I do feel what you are saying about Smoger but i dont think of him as harshly as you.

I think he is a top 3 ref tbh but behind Bayless and Weeks.
Best thing i like about Bayless is that when he makes a mistake (rare occurance) he owns up to it.

Now i have to find a high def clip of the ending of the RJJ/Lebedev fight to see of his positioning was really that bad.

 

It isn't dense to expect a ref to be competant and to always try to stay in position to see what is happening in the fight.

This is why I dislike Mercante Jr. as well, but unlike Smoger who is out of shape, Mercante Jr. gets out of position on purpose so he can glide around the ring and show off his foot work like his worthless pops.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMoOfCgy6r4[/ame]

He can't even lie right, Roy is slumped forward completely and Lebedev looks at Smoger, Smoger does nothing and waits for another punch to land. BS he couldn't tell he was out.

 

You ignore a lot to make your point seem reasonable if that is all you took away from that interview with Smoger on the Jones fight. Not much point in continuing if you are going to cherry pick instead of try to see the whole picture. It's so easy to be the perfect ref from your easy chair though.

 

Hmm he does go into the crouch with rabbit ears .... not sure if there is any position where Smoger can really see Roys eyes there.
But it did look fairly clear that Roy was done (although if what Smoger said that Roy played possum out of that earlier meh ...)

Im rather indecided on this tbh but i can see your point and im not going to disagree with it.

 

I"m not cherry picking anything, whose fault was it that Smoger wasn't in position? Isn't it the job of the ref to maintain acceptable position so they can see the actions?

Why cry and defend a person who admits they were out of position and because so a fighter got hurt more than they should have? Not to mention the half assed slide to call the fight off BS he did.

 

Is he not Jewish? Is Jew a derogatory term? Just asking breh.

 

Nice try, but Smoger clearly did not see Lebedev looking at him. - Because he was closely watching Roy, exactly as he should have been.

Smoger did the right thing. Once second earlier, and he could have ruined the fight, had Roy been playing possum. Imagine how hard it must be to make such split-second decisions.

 

It's not really a derogatory term, but it has been used as an insult, usually by assholes that watch too much South Park or are genuinely discriminatory. I've often seen Bob Arum called a Jew as an insult several times on this board. The fact that he is Jewish should be irrelevant; the only reason it's brought up is as an insult with the intention of linking his being Jewish to highlight how greedy he is.