Matt Korobov planning official protest after draw against Immanuwel Aleem

Matt Korobov came out with a controversial draw against Immanuwel Aleem in last Saturday night’s opening bout on FOX. The Russian middleweight was originally announced the winner by majority decision, but a tabulating error changed that to a majority draw.

Korobov (28-2-1, 14 KO) seemed to really do enough to win the fight — BLH had it 98-92 in his favor, with the closest reasonable score in our eyes being 96-94 for Korobov — but two judges had the fight 95-95, with the third at 97-93 Korobov.

Korobov was coming in off of a close and debated decision loss in December against Jermall Charlo, and co-promoter Sampson Lewkowicz now plans to file a protest with the officials in Virginia after this latest perceived injustice.

“It takes away from a great night of boxing when judges do things like this,” said Sampson Lewkowicz. “This poor kid fights his heart out and then they keep taking it from him. He should be the middleweight champion of the world right now. Instead, he’s got one loss and one draw in his last two fights.

“These judges need to be disciplined. They are affecting the future of the boxer when they render these kinds of decisions. This isn’t a sport where a boxer can just play again next week. This is serious business and these judges need to realize that before they hand in these terrible scorecards. That could have been a great night for boxing to attract new fans and instead it was a reminder of how often a great night of boxing gets ruined by, at best, incompetent officiating.”

In all reality, it’s extremely unlikely that a protest will go anywhere or accomplish anything. It’s very rare that anything happens, and even in the case of, say, Erislandy Lara being flat robbed in New Jersey against Paul Williams back in 2011, judges did get suspended but it’s not as if the result was overturned or anything. I’m not saying Lewkowicz shouldn’t file a protest or make a stink, just that I doubt anything comes of it.