An international crew has been assembled for the May 21 light heavyweight championship rematch between Jean Pascal and Bernard Hopkins in Montreal, with no American or Canadian officials among the referee and three official judges ringside for the fight.
The third man in the ring will be the United Kingdom's Ian John-Lewis, who made some waves in March during a Prizefighter tournament when he somehow scored the Joe Ainscough vs Wayne Reed fight 30-28 for Ainscough. Here's what we said at the time:
So let's say you're on this site and you understand boxing score to some degree, right? How does Joe Ainscough get a 30-28 card when he was both beaten up AND knocked down in the third round? How does Joe Ainscough get a 10-10 round there? That card came from Ian-John Lewis, by the way, and he should be held accountable. A disgrace, and sadly overshadowed another exciting fight with a very brave performance by Ainscough. It's not even so much that he won, but 30-28 Ainscough is indefensible. Period.
He was also the third man in the ring for the Vitali Klitschko vs Shannon Briggs fight last year, a fight I think almost any top-level referee would have stopped at some point, but it was allowed to continue as a brutal one-sided beating.
The ringside judges will be: Anek Hongtongkam (Thailand), Rey Danseco (Philippines) and Guido Cavalleri (Italy). Both Hongtongkam and Cavalleri also worked Klitschko vs Briggs, and are respected international judges. Danseco is far less experienced than the other two, but has worked a few title fights, recently working two fights (both ending in knockouts) on the big April 8 card in Japan main evented by Jhonny Gonzalez and Hozumi Hasegawa. You can read more about Danseco from his Wikipedia page and draw your own conclusions.
Two days ago, word got out that the boxing commission in Quebec was considering extra drug testing for the fight, which many of us found a bit oddly-timed.