Boxing analyst Paulie Malignaggi is in favor of the referee giving Tyson Fury a standing eight count in round nine when he’d been hit with 20 consecutive headshots by Oleksandr Usyk and ropes were holding him up.
Malignaggi’s Referee Rant: Stop the Stoppages!
Paulie wants referees to hand out standing eight counts left and right and stop the stoppages. Yeah, that’ll go over well with fans, seeing referees give standing eight counts each time a fighter is on the verge of being knocked out. It sounds like Malingaggi’s vision is to turn the pro game into amateur boxing.
Malignaggi notes that many referees stop the fight when a fighter is out on his feet, slumped against the ropes like Fury. He says those referees are wrong and that they’re supposed to give standing eight counts.
Unfortunately, that very, very, rarely happens that way, and the fact that this referee chose to give the popular superstar Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) a standing eight count when he was close to being knocked out in round nine, it looks like he was saving him from being stopped.
It’s unclear if this same referee does that for every fighter who is out on his feet against the ropes. If that’s what he always does, fans could understand it, but if he did this because of Fury’s popularity, then it looks like he was saving him.
“David Haye said if that’s Usyk, the fight gets stopped. Possibly, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right decision,” said boxing expert Paulie Malignaggi to Probox TV about the ninth round of the Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk fight in which the referee Mark Nelson stepped in and gave a standing eight-count to the A-side fighter, Fury after he was hurt and close to being stopped.
“There’s more emotion there because the bigger guy [Fury] is planting you against the ropes and hitting you with all those unanswered punches and the optics of it might look worse.
Flashback to Fury-Wilder
“Also, Tyson Fury has a reputation for not going away when you think he’s going away,” said Malignaggi talking about Fury’s first and third fights with Deontay Wilder.
Many people believe the referee should have stopped the first Fury-Wilder fight when Fury was knocked completely out cold in round twelve, but the referee surprisingly gave a count.
Normally, when fighters are unconscious, the referee stops the fight immediately, but it didn’t happen in this case. In the eyes of a lot of fans, Fury was given special treatment due to his popularity that normal fighters wouldn’t be given.
Referees are supposed to stop fights when a fighter is unconscious. They don’t give unconscious fighters counts in this era of the sport.
That’s like the 1950s when referees would give counts to unconscious fighters. That doesn’t happen anymore, but it was with Fury, and it looked like he was given preferential treatment, and that’s NOT the way it’s supposed to be.
In the third Fury-Wilder, Fury was knocked down in the fourth round and it appeared the referee gave a slow count, which Tyson barely beat at the count of nine.
Fans on social media believe that if the referee had counted normally, Fury would have been counted out. Again, it looked to some fans like Fury was given preferential treatment.
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