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Wednesday Oct. 2nd at 3:00 PM ET Banner Promotions hosted an international conference call with Bryan Vera to discuss his controversial decision loss to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr and efforts to put together a rematch. Bryan was joined by trainer Ronnie Shields and the President of Banner Promotions Arthur Pelullo. You can watch (or just listen to) the video below:
My notes (just stuff I personally felt worth mentioning):
- Team Vera is confident they can rectify the scoring debacle by bringing the rematch to Texas. History has shown both fighters have received favorable (or lack thereof) results in Texas. Vera believes Texas is more his territory than Chavez.
- Team Vera thinks something needs to be done about judges not being held accountable for their dubious scorecards (which is something people say every year and nothing significant ever comes of it).
- Ronnie Shields thinks if Chavez Jr. can't make 168 for the rematch he should be fined half of a million dollars. He also thinks Chavez Jr. was looking for help from the referee, but didn't get it, and claims that Vera never threw an illegal blow. (I recall Lou Moret telling Chavez Jr. to "stop crying" at one point.)
- Ronnie Shields also said cutting the fight from 12 to 10 rounds helped Chavez Jr, despite Chavez claiming "Vera was done" in the 10th round. He thinks Chavez was easily 200 lbs in the ring and clearly out of shape. (I did score the last 4 rounds for Vera but thought Chavez had a good case in the 10th.)
- Artie Pelullo says officials weren't appointed until the day before and "cause" is needed to replace them.
- Shields hasn't watched the fight again and doesn't think he needs to. He knows Vera got robbed (his opinion).
- HBO has to look at their budget to see if they can host the fight again, but it will go ahead on PPV otherwise. Pelullo says they're targeting December 7th or 14th.
- Shields says maybe Virgil Hunter was right about nefarious activities taking place ringside, but he doesn't know.
And then some other stuff was said of little note (in my opinion) before I was dropped from the call. I don't know if it was just me, but when I tried to call back I was immediately dropped again. I think I heard enough anyways...
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Update: Complete Conference Call Transcript
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Ryan Bivins is a staff writer for BadLeftHook. You can contact him on twitter (@sweetboxing) or through email (rgbivins@gmail.com).