LAS VEGAS — Manny Robles and Tom Loeffler felt disappointed but not defeated.
Yes, their fighter, junior middleweight Serhii Bohachuk, had taken the loss on the scorecards, receiving the short end of a majority decision against Vergil Ortiz Jr. on Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
And so while they were upset at what they heard from ring announcer Mark Fratto after those 12 hard-fought rounds, they were also proud of what they felt they had seen.
“We don’t agree with the decision,” said Loeffler, Bohachuk’s promoter, speaking to reporters shortly afterward. “Every text that I’ve gotten and everything I’ve read on social media says Bohachuk won that fight. For us, we feel that he’s still the champion. We feel that he won the fight and should still be considered a champion.”
“I’m still upset,” said Robles, Bohachuk’s trainer. “The decision should’ve went our way. Sometimes you’re watching a close fight and you try to find a way to say, ‘OK, well he got a 10-8, it’s a close fight, but what’s going to make the difference is a knockdown. In this case there wasn’t one knockdown. There were two knockdowns. And we still didn’t get the decision.”
Indeed, Bohachuk dropped Ortiz in the first and eighth rounds, flash knockdowns that nevertheless earned Bohachuk 10-8 scores from all three judges. But by the end of the night, two of the three judges had Ortiz ahead, 114-112, or eight rounds to four, while the third judge had it even, 113-113, or seven rounds to Ortiz and five for Bohachuk. To many of those watching both on television and in the arena, it was a very close fight.
(Bohachuk and Ortiz were not present at the post-fight press conference, asked by the athletic commission to go to the hospital for precautionary scans.)
Both Loeffler and Robles praised Ortiz as well:
“A lot of credit to Vergil Ortiz, who showed he is a true warrior in the ring going 12 rounds with Serhii Bohachuk,” Loeffler said.
“Vergil is a warrior,” Robles said. “I’ve worked with Vergil in the past, as you all know. I have nothing but respect for Vergil and his team.”
But they still wanted to make their case that the result should have gone Bohachuk’s way.
“You can’t give every close round to Vergil,” Loeffler said. “We’re not taking anything from him. He landed some hard shots, but Serhii was pressing the action, he was coming forward, he was landing more punches than Vergil [Note: CompuBox had Ortiz outlanding Bohachuk in total punches and power punches]. I knew it was close. With the second knockdown, I figured there was no way they can overcome two knockdowns, and somehow they figured out a way to do that.”
Robles directed his ire at what he feels is a lack of accountability for boxing judges in general.
“I’m sick and tired of this shit, time and time again, how unfair they can be to these fighters. They put their lives on the line. Everything that they go through to get to this point,” Robles said. “These officials, I don’t know what the fuck they’re looking at. And not only that. Nobody holds them accountable. They interview the fighters. They interview the judges, the managers, the promoters. Everybody except the judges. They [the judges] just go home and nobody tells them anything. Nobody questions them. Nobody puts them on the spot. I believe that’s got to stop. I believe they should be held accountable.”
Bohachuk’s team nonetheless planned to celebrate — the boxer still attended a post-fight party.
“As much as we believe we won the fight, I learned one thing a long time ago from my dad, man,” Robles said. “What he would tell me is in victory you keep your head down and stay humble, and in defeat you keep your head up to show your dignity. And that’s what happened today.”
“If you look at social media, his [Bohachuk’s] value went up tremendously as if he still kept his title,” Loeffler said, mentioning that he heard positive words from boxing financier Turki Alalshikh and WBC head Mauricio Sulaiman afterward. (This bout was for Bohachuk’s WBC’s interim title.)
That kind of support could be helpful if Bohachuk is to seek a rematch with Ortiz or look for other opportunities in the 154-pound weight class, especially given that Ortiz’s team is now looking toward a fight with Terence Crawford, among other junior middleweights in this packed division.
“If we press for a rematch, I think the WBC will support their champion. If there’s controversial scoring, I think they could mandate a rematch. We’ll see. Mauricio Sulaiman said that he would support Serhii,” Loeffler said. “We’ll see how it plays out. We’ll see what options there are. The great thing about the division, for Serhii and Vergil, is there’s other great fights out there for both of them.
“This is such a great fight, this could be done two times or three times like a Canelo-GGG type of trilogy,” added the promoter, who worked with Golovkin. “Unfortunately we had bad scoring in that trilogy, too. The difference there is that Serhii had two knockdowns. GGG definitely won that first fight but he didn’t have the knockdowns, so he couldn’t make as strong of an argument. This one’s [this argument is] a tough one to overcome. Serhii’s stock went up a lot.”
Follow David Greisman on Twitter @FightingWords2. His book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.
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