By: Shane Willoughby
After the craziness that occurred in Riga last Saturday, many fans are criticising the refereeing and his lack of control.
Whilst the madness with the elbow and the punch behind the head was bad, the most bizarre scenario was at the end of round 2. In fact, let’s call that round, 2 and a half.
For those who don’t know, both Briedis and Glowacki were allowed to fight for 30 seconds after the bell rang and was only stopped because Breidis knocked the polish man down.
Oh where, oh where was the referee you may ask? Well let me quickly refresh your memory? For those who watched the fight live on T.V or attended the venue, you would have heard Robert Byrd give clear instructions at the start of the fight to both fighters.
You guys are big guys, I’m not going to wrestle with you”. In layman’s terms, I’m not breaking you up because I don’t want to get hurt. Not only are these comments so absurd, they are hilarious because neither fighter speaks English.
To top it off Mr Byrd said “I’m going to give you clear instructions, that’s what I want you to do, your going to hear me say stop, what that means is stop what your doing and give me a clean break.”
There is so many things wrong with this. Firstly when he was relaying this message to the fighters, both of them wasn’t even listening because they don’t understand English.
But probably the most laughable statement was when he said “you’re going to hear me say stop.” In what boxing match have you seen two guys, almost 200lbs stop because the referee says so. Sorry Mr Byrd but that idea was never going to work.
To be fair to the referee, he clearly didn’t want to get physically involved and he at least had the decency to tell everyone at the start of the fight. Why people are criticising him for not breaking them up after the 2nd round is crazy.
In fact after he deducted a point from Briedis for the elbow, Byrd said “keep it clean I don’t want be apart of it”. Sorry but where did the WBO find this guy. He definetly isn’t getting any medals for bravery.
The man told you that he isn’t getting involved! Hopefully this adds some clarity to exactly why the fight was allowed to go on for so long after the bell. But Robert Byrd done a fine job masquerading as a referee, but he proved that he didn’t want no action.