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Willie Savannah talks Juan Diaz-Ricky Hatton, scoring controversy, and more

Img_336_medium Juan Diaz's manager Willie Savannah spoke with BoxingScene.com's Rick Reeno about the scoring controversy that has dominated boxing news for the last few days, and the interview is such a total shuck-and-jive job that it made my head spin.

Before I get started here, let me clarify a few things:

  1. I'm not arguing with Savannah saying Diaz beat Paulie Malignaggi. I think the fight was highly debatable and Diaz has a great argument.
  2. I do not have any problem with Willie Savannah, but this interview is so full of boxing institution junk that I just could not help myself. This is not Mr. Savannah's "fault"; he's playing the game and doing his job. I'm merely using this as an example of some of the things in boxing that bug the living crap out of a lot of us, and have driven many people away. (I'm not saying they all became UFC/MMA fans, either. Most of them just probably stopped watching, period.)

Item One: Apparently, Willie wants to "take shots at factual errors going around"

"I see all these people writing about the Texas judges. [Raul] Caiz is from California and the other guy who I never heard of is from Oklahoma. There was only one Texas judge. The other two guys were out-of-state judges. We would have fought him with any judges, except three New York judges."

This ignores the problem and tries to get you to think you're wrong, and that Paulie is wrong. Malignaggi said before the fight that his problems included (but were not limited to):

  • Gale Van Hoy, a Texas judge with a history of hometown decisions in Texas.
  • A judge that apparently freaking nobody has heard of from Oklahoma, whose name is David Sutherland, for the record. Sutherland scored the fight 116-112 for Diaz, which I think is perfectly defensible. On the undercard, Sutherland gave Danny Jacobs a 100-89 clean sweep of Ishe Smith, which is completely indefensible and every bit as atrocious as Van Hoy's 118-110 Diaz card in the main event. Both of them proved their incompetence on Saturday night.
  • Caiz, a Mexican-American judge that Malignaggi accuses of being a Golden Boy ringer.
  • Referee Laurence Cole, a Texas referee with an abominable history that has no business refereeing shows at National Guard Armories, let alone championship-level fights like this one and some of the others he's mucked up.

In fact, how about we just quote a pre-fight Malignaggi:

"You have Gale Van Hoy, a judge from Texas who scored the Chris John-Rocky Juarez fight a draw. Then you have Raul Caiz, a Mexican judge from California who is anything but neutral. Looking at the fights Caiz has judged in the past, he is far from neutral when it comes to Golden Boy and Mexican fighters. The referee is Laurence Cole and all you have to do is look him up to see his past. Then they had a judge from Las Vegas, and we didn't have a problem with her, so they go and change the judge to some from Oklahoma that I've never even heard of."

Where is the great misunderstanding? We know what States the judges were from. Pointing out that they aren't all from Texas is a lame attempt at just plain not addressing the matter at hand.

Capt Item Two: Since Juan didn't "blow out" Malignaggi, that's why people think he lost

"People are used to seeing Juan blowing people out and because he didn't blow this guy out, then he must have lost. They remember his fights with Acelino Freitas, Julio Diaz and Michael Katsidis and because he didn't blow this guy out, they think he lost. I thought we won the fight, and they think [Paulie] won the fight."

Again: It's not any problem with Diaz getting the W.

Interesting that he names the Katsidis fight, which I felt was damn near as big a blowout as the Freitas and Julio Diaz bouts for sure, but was scored 115-113 Katsidis but judge Glen Hamada. I wonder if Hamada was simply incompetent that night?

This is another attempt to simply avoid talking about this. He does not even address the fact that Gale Van Hoy's scorecard was absolutely not correct or even defensible. Yes, judging is a matter of opinion or taste to some degree, but nobody on earth besides Van Hoy thought this fight was 10-2 in terms of rounds for Diaz. He has been called out on this not just by Malignaggi and his supporters, but by Golden Boy chief Oscar de la Hoya and freaking Juan Diaz, for God's sake. Savannah, though, doesn't touch it.

Star-divide

Instead, he implies that those of us with the opinion that Malignaggi deserved the notch in his win column were having visions or the like, imagining that since Diaz wasn't winning easily, he must have been losing. So apparently in Willie Savannah's mind, the boxing public accepts only two things: Juan Diaz cruising or Juan Diaz losing. Sure, that's been his career up to this point, but believe it or not, I'm willing to give the boxing public enough credit to believe that even before this fight, we all imagined that Diaz could have possibly been in a tight, hotly-contested bout that he won on some peoples' cards, and lost on some others. Call me crazy.

Item Three: Home turf is only OK if it's your home turf

As you probably heard, Diaz, Golden Boy, Savannah, and everyone else associated with Juan want a fight with Ricky Hatton. I think it's a great fight and a great idea. But dig this:

"I don't know about fighting [Hatton] in the U.K., though. Juan Lazcano trained in my gym for that fight with Hatton. When he hurt Ricky, the referee called timeout. I don't know about fighting him out there. We would rather fight him in Las Vegas. He brings a lot of people over and he would probably bring over a lot more people than we would. ... [H]opefully we can do it in Las Vegas, and not in the U.K."

Willie's right about the Lazcano fight, which featured one of the most bizarre timeouts you'll ever see, as referee Howard John Foster called time so that a reeling, clearly hurting Hatton could get his shoe tied. It was Laurence Cole-level bad, in fact. It was blatant and it was crap. And the scoring in that fight (120-110, 120-108, 118-110 Hatton) was pretty questionable across the board, though the right guy did win (as was the case in Diaz-Malignaggi, some will argue).

But isn't it funny that Hatton apparently would get too much of a hometown advantage fighting Diaz in Manchester? His business arguments aren't really sound, either. First of all, Hatton-Diaz isn't going to bring over the fans the way that Hatton-Mayweather or Hatton-Pacquiao did. It's just not that big of a fight. Frankly, Ricky will never bring fans over to the States like that again, no matter who he fights. There was even a notable dropoff in Hatton support at the Pacquiao fight as compared to the Mayweather fight. That sort of phenomenal loyalty is probably out of the question for a fight with Juan Diaz.

Furthermore, Hatton-Diaz could probably sell out City of Manchester Stadium in Manchester, and that packs a whole hell of a lot more people than any boxing venue in Vegas. Even scaling out ticket prices, Hatton-Diaz in the U.K. makes more money than it does in the States.

He is right that Diaz wouldn't bring fans to the U.K., though.

Item Four: Malignaggi rematch?

"If we don't fight Hatton, we would have no problem fighting Paulie in a rematch, but our preference would be Ricky. I'll say one thing, there won't be a match in New York. Maybe it could happen in Las Vegas, but not in New York."

Yeah. There might be some home cooking to worry about in New York, huh?

I truly apologize if I happen to have offended Willie Savannah, because that is not my intention. Again, I understand he's simply doing his job, trying to get people talking about Hatton-Diaz and forgetting about the controversy from Saturday in Houston. I don't fault him for that. He's paid to keep his guy in the right light.

But when you read interviews like this, you can't help but think back to Paulie Malignaggi's five "Magic" words from Saturday: Boxing is full of s**t.

2 recs  |  Comment 16 comments |

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Home turf is only OK if it's your home turf''

He has no shame at all, to make clear that he wouldn’t want a Hatton fight in the UK or Paulie in New York. His arguments are all full of it.

We're all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on people. (Sugar Ray Leonard)

by BrianBrock on Aug 26, 2009 6:53 AM EDT reply actions   0 recs

My big problem with Sutherland’s card is this: A good judge could possibly come up with 116-112 Diaz, but I’m not entirely convinced that Sutherland is a good judge. I’m not saying he definitely isn’t, but his Jacobs-Smith scores that night were horrible.

Let’s take some photos of these cards and make them public. I personally think this should always be done anyway, regardless of whether the card is controversial or not. If Sutherland’s turns out to be fishy, like he scored the third round for Diaz or something, then toss out the fight, call it an NC and do the rematch in, I don’t know, Montana or something. I’m pretty sure they hate both Mexicans and New Yorkers up there.

"This fight'll be the nastiest thing you'll ever see. I been sober for six weeks, and that makes me vicious."
-- Randall 'Tex' Cobb

by jrok on Aug 26, 2009 9:49 AM EDT reply actions   0 recs

Seriously!!!

If you watched that fight you would have to agree with P.M. about those score cards. I don’t even like this guy but robbery is robbery. He won that fight and at the most it should have been by a split decision at best. For the judges to render a decision of unanimous was terrible for J.D… Seriously. Again I don’t even like P.M. I watched the fight because I pay for the station.

by Haans Bishop on Aug 26, 2009 1:46 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

He won that fight and at the most it should have been by a split decision at best.

No fight ever should be a split decision.

Bad Left Hook
"Well Howie, I think I'm going to stay outside and outjab him." -- Tex Cobb telling Howard Cosell how he would approach Larry Holmes

by SC on Aug 26, 2009 3:05 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

but...

what if its possible to see the fight both ways as it was really close? Then with boxing scoring being in part subjective, its unlikely all 3 judges will or should see it for one fighter?

We're all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on people. (Sugar Ray Leonard)

by BrianBrock on Aug 26, 2009 3:17 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

Unlikely, yes, but again, no fight should be a split decision. I mean you’re saying, “I think two judges should’ve seen it one way and the third should have seen it the other.”

Bad Left Hook
"Well Howie, I think I'm going to stay outside and outjab him." -- Tex Cobb telling Howard Cosell how he would approach Larry Holmes

by SC on Aug 26, 2009 3:46 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

what I meant was

A fight can be so close that one fighter would feel aggrieved if he lost and all three of the judges saw the other guy winning. So maybe it seems like a ‘fairer’ result if its a SD rather than UD?

We're all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on people. (Sugar Ray Leonard)

by BrianBrock on Aug 26, 2009 4:02 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

A fight can be so close that one fighter would feel aggrieved if he lost and all three of the judges saw the other guy winning.

This is a really weird mindset is all. It’s a loss either way. Unanimous decisions can be every bit as arguable as split decisions. I’ve never seen a fight ruled a split where I was like, “Hey at least it was a split, that guy earned getting one card.”

Bad Left Hook
"Well Howie, I think I'm going to stay outside and outjab him." -- Tex Cobb telling Howard Cosell how he would approach Larry Holmes

by SC on Aug 26, 2009 4:19 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

A 116-112 score for Diaz is not defensible. The most I could see this fight at is 115-113 Diaz

And thats giving Diaz every benefit of the doubt. I had it 116-112 for Paulie. I

by Upstait on Aug 26, 2009 4:26 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

true

a loss is a loss. Yeah, you’re going to think that ‘"Hey at least it was a split, that guy earned getting one card."’ But if Diaz fight was a split decision with no 118-110, there wouldn’t have been any(or far less) drama from Paulie/all round. You accept it was a close fight and a couple of judges saw it the other way.

We're all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on people. (Sugar Ray Leonard)

by BrianBrock on Aug 26, 2009 4:32 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

Yeah

I don’t get this either. You can score a win for either fight or a draw, but you can’t score a “split decision.” That’s just a result that can happen when three judges don’t agree on the winner. They don’t all get together at the end of a fight and say “hey, this was pretty close, so let’s make this a split decision.”

"This fight'll be the nastiest thing you'll ever see. I been sober for six weeks, and that makes me vicious."
-- Randall 'Tex' Cobb

by jrok on Aug 26, 2009 3:53 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

I'm not sure if I expressed myself well...

or am making that much sense….but essentially its that if its close, then its more likely that they wouldn’t see it all the same way. They’re not getting together for an SD, just naturally, subjectively some are going to see a certain round/s differently and in a close fight thats enough for an SD…anyway

We're all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on people. (Sugar Ray Leonard)

by BrianBrock on Aug 26, 2009 4:11 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

That's ok, I know what you mean.

I think the others do too, they’re just being a bit picky.

At least, I think what you mean is, with the fight being as close as it was, there was no way a UD for Diaz is acceptable to you. Whereas, had the official decision been 115-113 (twice) and 113-115,you could at least feel that the cards were just, wheras a wide UD is, well, bullshit.

Boxing is the beginning of all sports. I'm willing to bet that the first sport was a man against another man in a fight. (Omar Epps)

by Chaos100 on Aug 26, 2009 4:21 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

yeah pretty much dude

I’m not a fighter, and they probably have a different mentality, but for me it would be easier to take as ‘fair’ and not a robbery.

We're all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on people. (Sugar Ray Leonard)

by BrianBrock on Aug 26, 2009 4:37 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

Oh ok

I get what you mean. I mean, I think the result would have been considered less controversial or whatever, if there was a Paulie card. And an SD does often look better on a record in terms of marketing and promotions and whatnot.

"This fight'll be the nastiest thing you'll ever see. I been sober for six weeks, and that makes me vicious."
-- Randall 'Tex' Cobb

by jrok on Aug 26, 2009 4:53 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

yeah, I see this side of it

Bad Left Hook
"Well Howie, I think I'm going to stay outside and outjab him." -- Tex Cobb telling Howard Cosell how he would approach Larry Holmes

by SC on Aug 26, 2009 7:26 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

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