“Sometimes they put a referee who has good intentions but doesn’t have the experience. [The ref] was a nice guy, he’s been around a little bit, but he’s only done four world championship fights in the past," Cortez told SiriusXM.
"A fight of this magnitude – with Joseph Parker and Anthony Joshua – you need a referee in there with at least 25 world championship fights under his belt, is good under pressure, doesn’t take sides and be fair but firm like I was.
"They need to take action that the right time. There’s a couple of instances during the fight where he broke them up too early or when the tape/gauze was coming off around the gloves and hanging out and he was just letting it sit there then he would just tuck it inside the glove and it would come out again.
"There was a time where Joshua got a little hurt and he called time and brought him to the corner. Giuseppe is a nice guy but sometimes you gotta look and say ‘Who the hell put him in that position at that time?’ You gotta put someone in there with experience.”
Quite rich coming from a man who broke the action at every opportunity for Mayweather/Hatton.
Exactly, he was a first rate ref but towards the end of his career he started to think the crowd was there to watch him. Let the fame go to his head.
Indeed. When he was based on the East Coast he was a very good ref. Then he moved to Las Vegas and it all went pear shaped. With Cortez, Steele or Vann it never seemed to go against the house fighter did it.
I remember a mod saying I like Poncey that Cortez used to have life sized portraits of Mayweather and another boxer he favoured in his home gym.
Always hated him for the Hatton fight, when Billy Graham spoke to him in the dressing room asking for a fair shake of the rub, how Ricky is perceived as a dirty finger and isn’t etc and he said he would be fair with both.
He wasn’t. Not to say Ricky would have won but to see FMJ have his body and ribs pumulled in the clinch etc would had answered a few questions.
I concur. No way ricky would have won, but a much better fight. I was screaming at the screen that night.
I agree james,ricky would never of won that night but would of caused mayweather abit of problems maybe and we would have seen how mayweather dealt with the pressure at that stage of his career.
That's the problem with poor refereeing, it robs the fans of seeing a good fight. Mayweather definitely looked a little harried in the first couple of rounds between rounds, before Cortez effectively made infighting illegal.
