when/why did top fighters stop reffing?

[margaret thatcher]

jersey joe walcott ref'd one of the biggest fights in boxing history

jack dempsey was a ref


but top fighters refing seems to have died completely......when/why?

[margaret thatcher]

randy neuman.....hw fringe contender.....is that the last ref with any sort of career at that level or higher?

[evrenb]

Jack Sharkey is a good example of this.

[Controversial]

Maybe just a different era and it was seen as a thing to do in those times

[HomicideHenry]

I think it's been kind of discouraged over the years because commissions, etc feel that the ex-fighters give too much leeway to the boxers, etc.

[scartissue]

It seemed to be a case years ago of staying in the game, perhaps for the love of the sport. I don't know. Out in California it seemed to be common place seeing an ex-fighter as the third man. Richard Steele was just a club-fighter, but George Latka, Rudy Jordan and John Thomas were all top 10 rated lightweights and they were all terrific referees.

[Ambling Alp II]

It did used to be a thing. I remember Joe Louis doing Quarry-Frazier and seemed clueless. Of course Walcott was horrible in Ali-Liston II. Sonny Liston actually reffed a Cleveland Williams fight while he was still active himself!

James Jeffries, Tommy Loughran and Ruby Goldstien did quite a few fights, many of them major ones.

[Caractacus]

Eddie Cotton was a former boxer turned referee
so was Richard Steele ( who once sparred with Ken Norton in the amateurs ).
Earnie Shavers used to referee Wrestling matches in the 1980's.

[Caractacus]

I don't know if Eddie Cotten had ever laced gloves up at all,
I think he may have been a Basketball player tho.

[Caractacus]

actually I was thinking of Zach Clayton who was the former Basketball player (Harlem Globetrotters)
he was the first African-American to ref a HW title fight (Walcott vrs Ezzard Charles)

[Ambling Alp II]

Zach Clayton also did Ali-Foreman. It doesn't seem like he did a lot of major fights in between though.

There were two Eddie Cotton's. One was a light heavyweight contender, and the other a referee. (He did Lewis-Tyson).