Referee doesn’t deserve low blow for messing up

If you were among the thousands in attendance and the millions watching around the world on Showtime, as ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. says, then you must abide by what is written here and elsewhere: That this son of a boxer (and the brother of boxers and a boxer once himself) from New Mexico named Russell Mora did not do a good job of refereeing Saturday's Abner Mares vs. Joseph Agbeko IBF bantamweight title fight at the Hard Rock Hotel.

Mora was the third man in the ring, as they say in boxing. Perhaps a fourth man was needed, to detect all the low blows that Mares threw and Mora missed, or ruled to have landed on the waistband of Agbeko's trunks.

One of these, in the 11th round, had a big effect on the fight. And on Agbeko's protective cup. Mora called it a knockdown for Mares. A 10-8 round. And there went Agbeko's chance to win.

So Mora had a rough day at the office. It happens. Most of us can relate, but not all of us. Not Steve Williams, Tiger Woods' former caddie, who never has had a bad day on the job. Just ask him.

As you read this, somebody is getting chewed out for not having the report on his supervisor's desk, for spilling coffee on the foreign dignitary, for not asking if you wanted fries with that. And somebody is getting them steadily depressin' low-down mind-messin' workin' at the car wash blues.

After bearing witness to this fight, and the interviews that followed, one also must assume that Showtime's Jim Gray does not equate Mora's performance to having a bad day at the car wash.

Judging by the way the Capeless Crusader browbeat Mora, Gray apparently considers missing low blows the equivalent of Captain Joe Hazelwood getting loaded and running aground the Exxon-Valdez, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound.

The way Gray kept hammering on Mora, you would have thought the referee had just been shamelessly smooching LeBron James' backside on national TV when James announced he would be taking his talents to South Beach.

"The question is," Gray began after Mares was awarded a majority decision, "would he have won without your help?"

Though insinuating a boxing referee is on the take and lacks of integrity seems a novel way to break the ice, I first must check with Larry Merchant for a ruling.

Gray showed Mora a replay of the most blatant of the low blows; Mora suggested he missed it but that he called it the way he saw it. Gray continued to ask tough questions, which was fine, before closing by telling Mora he was "way off," which was not fine.

It would have been like Ken Rosenthal telling Jim Joyce he was way off when he blew Armando Galarraga's perfect game, like Pam Oliver telling Ed Hochuli he was way off when he mistakenly blew his whistle and cost the Chargers a victory when Jay Cutler fumbled.

If Al Bernstein, the ringside analyst, wants to say that Mora was way off, that the fight he had just witnessed was, in his opinion, the worst-refereed exhibition of fisticuffs in the past 15 years -- which is what he said -- so be it. That's his prerogative. That's his job as an analyst. Gray's job is to interview the principals, not interrogate them.

One should assume that Mora is, or at least was, considered a pretty fair referee -- just as Joyce, and Don Denkinger before him, were considered pretty fair umpires -- or he wouldn't have been put in position to miss those low blows.

But now, after this, it's going to be awhile before Mora can resuscitate his reputation, just as it took Richard Steele awhile to rehabilitate his after he waved his arms in front of Meldrick Taylor with two seconds go in his infamous 1990 battle royal against Julio Cesar Chavez at the Las Vegas Hilton -- a decision for which Steele later was vindicated.

It turned out Taylor, who was ahead on the scorecards and would have been declared the winner had Steele not intervened, was never the same after taking a savage beating from Chavez.

One more punch might have killed him.

I talked to Steele on Wednesday, asked if he planned to speak to Mora. He said he already had, that Mora admitted to missing those low blows, admitted that the first knockdown should have been ruled a slip, admitted it was he, and not Hazelwood, who was behind the wheel of the Exxon-Valdez.

Learn from one's mistakes, conquer one's adversity. Steele told Mora he can move on from this but that it will take time. "Crawl from the bottom, work your way back up," Steele said.

Note to Gray: That part about Mora crashing the Exxon-Valdez isn't true.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.