Victor Galindez refused to fight Mike Rossman over dispute on judges and cancels rematch last minute

It kind of "irked" me, too, when I turned on the TV that afternoon to watch the fight, and Howard Cosell had to explain why the fight wasn't taking place.

As for why he wasn't punished, I have no idea. He was the organization's longtime champ, is all I can say. The WBA rescheduled the fight.

It was definitely rare.

I can't recall a similar situation where a challenger refused to fight over the judges, and the org said OKAY, we'll try again in two months with different judges. And everyone - the champ, the org, the network, everyone - just went along with it. (Must've been a pretty bad judges, is all I can say.)

The only other time I recall a challenger simply refusing a title fight -- and I was watching - was when Mike Williams was supposed to challenge Tommy Morrison for the WBO title, and Williams just refused to fight. (So, the promoter pulled Tim Tomashek out of the audience to fight Morrison.)

There was also the time Michael Spinks was supposed to defend against Eddie Mustafa Muhammad in their rematch, but Eddie came in a little heavy, and Spinks refused to fight him. That was supposed to be televised by HBO. And it was when weigh-ins were scheduled at around lunchtime on the day of the fight. So, it was a last-minute cancellation. The whole card was scrapped, I believe. Eddie agreed to fight a non-title match against Spinks, but Michael just refused the match. It kind of turned into a mini-brawl at one point, if I recall correctly.

But, again, that wasn't the challenger refusing the fight. It was the champ refusing to defend because the challenger missed weight. And missed-weight fights have become a lot more ordinary since then. But that was rare at the time.

Going back to Morrison, he was also involved in two other day-of-the-fight cancellations, both of which I also tuned in to watch. The first was when he was supposed to fight Herbie Hide for the WBO belt on Oct. 23, 1994, and the fight was cancelled during the day because Eddie Hearn's dad couldn't come up with the money to pay the boxers. That particularly sucked, because it was a loaded card. Ray Mercer was supposed to fight Frank Bruno that night, as well. Just sucked. And it was before the internet, so we didn't know the fight was cancelled until we turned on the PPV to watch, and there was a banner on the screen saying the fight was cancelled.

Morrison was also supposed to fight Arthur Weathers in 1996 on Showtime as a tuneup to a fight with Mike Tyson, but Morrison's blood test showed he had HIV, and the fight was scrapped. But the doctor couldn't announce why, and the Showtime broadcasters had to keep saying it was a blood test issue, but didn't want it to sound like he got caught with steroids. But didn't want to say he had HIV, because they could've been sued by Morrison. So, Morrison made the announcement a couple days later.

So, while Morrison was involved in three fights called off last minute, he was there ready to fight all three times, interestingly. And only one was really his doing.

 

Vaguely remember the Spinks fiasco. Read about the Galindez-Rossman deal, was kinda strange.

 

I've always empathized with Galindez on this.

Imagine if the situation were reversed, if it were a US fighter challenging a fighter from Argentina, in Argentina. If the local athletic commission appointed three Argentino judges and a ref from Argentina as well, the American public would think the fix was in. That sort of thing no longer flew in the late '70s.

I realize that this is generally considered a crazy person's point of view, but it's all I got. When the WBA acquiesced to Galindez's terms shortly thereafter instead of moving Rossman on to a new challenger, it wasn't a good look for the organization. But they never should have told the Nevada AC that they could name the officials in the first place.

 

Yeah but why should the challenger have the right to have his own personal officials assigned to a title fight?

In at least seven of Victor Emilio’s WBA title defenses, he had either or both of Stanley Christodoulou and Waldemar Schmidt as judge, referee or both worked the fight. And Victor won some very close and disputable decisions, including vs Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and Yaqui Lopez.

Christodoulou and Schmidt were WBA house officials and you better believe they judged/refereed to favor whomever the WBA wanted to win.

If he didn’t want to fight without them, so be it. But no way should he have been rewarded with a title fight for refusing to enter the ring on the day of the event. Rossman shouldn’t have to fight Victor + a judge and a ref who were in the challenger’s back pocket.