I caught a few of the middle rounds of last night’s Showtime bantamweight tournament final between Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko. For the few rounds I watched, Mares clearly hit Agbeko below the belt on multiple occasions. On some of the illegal blows, referee Russell Mora would warn him to keep the punches up and on the others he just ignored them. Jim Gray and the rest of the Showtime boxing crew seemed very agitated with the entire mess and couldn’t believe that points were not being taken away from Mares. Business eventually called me away from the television and I missed a brutal low blow by Mares in the 11th that would earn him a knockdown. When the fight was over, Mares came out on top on all three judge’s scorecards (113-113, 115-111, 115-111). Obviously, if a few points had been deducted on the repeated and fairly obvious low blows, Agbeko would have won.

Well, when the fight was over and Jim Gray went in the ring to speak with the pugilists, he made a beeline for Mora and dressed him down for being generally incompetent and influencing the outcome of the fight. Mora tried to defend himself against Gray’s video-backed dis-track and vowed to take a look at the tape later. Agbeko’s team will protest the ruling.

[h/t: The Queensberry Rules]