Judges Strong Arm Tevin Farmer

Boxing has many overused words as does any other sport but one that seems synonymous with the sport is the word “robbery”. This guy got robbed or that guy got robbed. The truth is whenever you allowthe human eyes, six eyes in particular, to judge what they see and render a verdict then you’re gonna have discrepancies and different interpretations of what each believe they saw.

These discrepancies and differentinterpretations are what causes these perceived “robberies”. Realityis that almost any fight called a “robbery” can be broken down and swung the other direction by the “close” rounds and flipping the score. It’s just that simple. If you say to yourself “I scored Golovkin/Canelo 116-112 for Golovkin. There’s no way Canelo did enough to get a draw”, then you’re giving GGG 8 rounds to 4 for Canelo and discounting the fact that there were several close roundsthat could’ve easily swung a 8-4 card to 6-6. I have no problem with someone scoring that fight 8-4 and that’s a fair assessment but to say that fight was a “robbery” is simply not being truthful to yourself. This same theory goes to a long, long line of fights such as Ward/Kovalev, Mayweather/Castillo 1, Hopkins/Calzaghe and on and on.

The word robbery should be rarely used in reality, you know for felons, Whitaker/Chavez, Roy in the Olympics and for what was done to Philadelphia resident Tevin Farmer last night at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The Nevada State Athletic Commission should be downright ashamed of themselves period for what took place lastnight. It was a injustice to not only Farmer but tothe sport of boxing itself.

Mostof the time when a controversial decision occurs there is somethingyou can point to a fighter done that can make you say “well the judges must have a tendency to favor the aggressor or the defensive fighter” or what have you. That simply was NOT the case lastnight. Kenichi Ogawa didn’t win a single oneof the four scoring criteria period. He didn’t have better clean punching, effective aggression, defense or the ever debated ring generalship in seven rounds of this fight plainand simple.

Punch stats are not something I like to look at but perhaps they tell the story the best here. Farmer landed 158 of 525 punches for a rate of 30% and Ogawa landed 99 of 445 punches for a rate of 22%. The final scorecards Tim Cheatham 116-112 for Farmer, Burt Clements 116-112 and Max Deluca 115-113 for Ogawa.

Farmer has fought an uphill battle since starting his career at 7-4-1. He was on a 18 fight win streak since he lost to former IBF champion Jose Pedraza, his 13th professional fight, prior to this fight. He simply doesn’t deserve what happened lastnightand neither does the sportof boxing. I mean hell, at least Jesse James used a gun when he robbed people whereas Farmer got robbed by pencil whippers disguised as boxing judges….