Jack Reiss, and the transition from being a referee to a judge

Jack Reiss has retired from being a referee, putting an end to what will one day be a hall-of-fame career, but he hasn’t yet fully stepped away.

Reiss will continue to judge bouts. Ultimately, he seeks to be an ambassador for his sport, and to leave it in a better place than when he started.

Reiss said the following when asked about why he will no longer referee after this year: “Being a referee has never been just a job to me—it’s been

a privilege and a calling. For 26 years, I’ve had the honor of being in the center of the ring for many unforgettable moments with some of the greatest fighters in boxing. Athletes, fighters, officials stay in a sport too long and ‘leave as a shell of themselves’.That’s not something I want for myself and why I am stepping down also. I never thought I’d go beyond my 69th birthday.”

Reiss wants to leave on top because he will be 69 in April. He said: “After an amazing and blessed journey as the third man in the ring, I’ve decided to step away from the physically demanding role of refereeing. However, I remain eager and well-equipped to continue contributing to the sport as a highly capable judge.”  

He highlighted that the past 12 months while officiating major fights such as Regis Prograis-Devin Haney, Emanuel Navarrete-Denys Berinchyk, and Israil Madrimov-Terence Crawford means he can bow out on a high. He explained the difference between reffing and judging as this: “You must concentrate for three minutes at a time with a ton of distractions, and you must know what you’re looking at. It takes a lot of work behind the scenes, but the physicality is out of it.”

From Brooklyn, New York, Reiss took to boxing at an early age. He grew up with an older brother called Ricky he would fight with socks on his hands, with encouragement from his father Harry. Harry was into boxing, and Reiss’ mom, Jean, always told him his father was involved in boxing, but he could never find any information. Reiss doesn’t know much about his father because he died when Reiss was young. Reiss also has a sister named Arlene. 

Reiss wanted to go to a boxing gym, but the only one he found was Gleason’s, in downtown Brooklyn.

“To get there you are going through some bad neighborhoods by train, and my mother said, ‘Absolutely not’,” Reiss said.

Reiss got into martial arts instead, after finding a local dojo run by the martial artist Louis Neglia. Reiss was an amateur full combat kickboxer. He had a fight, and he hurt his foot. The New Yorkerm, for one reason or another, went to California and never went back home.

Reiss became a firefighter with the Los Angeles Fire Department and retired as a aaptain after 31 years of service. The life lessons he learned from the LAFD have shaped his perspective, contributing to his developing a professional development conference for officials. The Sole Arbiter conference meets yearly. 

At 30, Reiss fought in the Battle of the Badges, an amateur boxing event that pits the LA Fire Department against the LA County Sheriff’s Department. After that he realized he had enough of, as he put it “getting punched in the face”. He thought maybe he should pursue being a boxing referee, but he didn’t know how to begin.

“I talked myself out of it,” he said. “Ten years later, I started pursuing it, and things started falling into place.”

First Reiss contacted the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Marc Ratner, the former executive officer of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, heard him out, but then asked him why he didn’t call the California Commission. At the time, Reiss only knew of Nevada’s because they held the biggest fights. 

He next reached out to the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) to ask what it took to become a referee. At the time, many referees were getting older and retiring, and they were looking for new ones. The CSAC ordered a class to be put together. Reiss was one of 104 who was in the class, and one of only nine who made it to be a referee or judge.

From there he became an iconic referee of an era. Many know him from the first fight between Deontay Wilder andTyson Fury. Reiss refereed more fights than most people have watched –– 1152, to be exact. In his fifth year as a referee, he began speaking at yearly seminars. Sanctioning bodies like the IBF, WBC and WBO asked him to teach at their conferences.

“I’ve always looked at myself as an ambassador to boxing,” Reiss said. “We show our mistakes and talk about things. We look at scenarios. We look at it and say, ‘What can we do differently or better if this happens again?’ It’s not about right or wrong, but we put it out as different or better.”

Reiss regardless never saw himself as the world does – as one of the best officials. 

“You don’t get to enjoy your work until you’re done, because you’re only as good as your last fight,” he said. “You’re in the moments, not looking back and appreciative sometimes, because you want to be the best you could be for the next one.”

One of the big lessons he teaches is you can’t fix a fight that isn’t good. “Sometimes, two guys are so full of adrenaline and emotion, that no matter what you do, it’s not going to be a good fight,” he said. “Don’t stop the fight every two seconds and warn them, don’t stop the fight and start taking points. You ruin whatever it is going to be if you over-officiate, and the story will be about how you ruined the fight. You’re not going to fix it. So, get through it as best as you can and as fast you can because it’s not about you!”

Reiss enters his final act, shaping the young people who are entering the sport to be rules officials. 

“That I was a good ref, that I was a fair human, a good person, and I passed the torch,” he responded when asked about his legacy. “That I never held anyone back, and I always tried to help everybody else.”

Reiss noted that every day he gets messages from other referees asking for advice about their performance. He gets so many he asks for specific timestamps to look at in the video because it is so time consuming. 

He brought three traits from the fire department with him into the ring – the first being to help each other, the second to leave the place you worked better than when you got there, and the third, and most important – helping others doesn’t diminish your success. 

“If you use your candle to light someone else’s candle, it doesn’t diminish your candle,” Reiss said. “So I’ve always felt that people have helped me in my life, and I’m going to help other people. That’s where all this began.”