BoxRec

From Fightnews.

WBO interim featherweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez can drop the interim part of his title if troubled featherweight champ Scott Harrison does not fight him by November 9. The WBO has ordered negotiations to commence between the camps of Marquez and Harrison, who was given a 180-day disability extension in May by the WBO championship committee to deal with depression and drinking issues. If Harrison isn't ready to fight by the November 9 deadline, he will be stripped of the world title, but installed as the WBO's mandatory challenger until February.

Let shope Harrison goes for it, he's been clamouring for a big fight for a long time.

I have a feeling he will vacate and move up to 130.

Or maybe the WBC route if Nicky Cook can get a shot.

I really cannot see this fight happening, and he will certainly not challenge Marquez.

I hope it happens, although I give Harrison very little chance of victory it would be good to see Marquez fight in Britain.

nickd wrote:I hope it happens, although I give Harrison very little chance of victory it would be good to see Marquez fight in Britain.

Yep, I'll take my hat off to Harrison win, lose or draw. Even if he gets humilitated I will not be over critical... cause it takes a brave man to risk earning big(ish) money vs no names and challenge the very best.

Can't see him being ready for this one. And who would promote it anyway? Sports Network would have to show a lot of faith after being burned last time...

if harrison wants that big fight he won't get a better chance than this.

hitman_hatton1 wrote:if harrison wants that big fight he won't get a better chance than this.

I second that

If it comes off I'll be rooting for Marquez to be honest. No way on gods green earth did Scott deserve that appalling decision against Victor Polo, and Polo has never been granted a rematch. Morales and Pacquiao are fighting for the third time in as many years, ditto for Clinton Woods and Glen Johnson, Barrera is taking on Juarez in an immediate rematch, Roy Jones faced Tarver in back to back fights and Jermain Taylor and Floyd Mayweather faced Bernard Hopkins and Jose Luis Castillo, respectively, in immediate rematches.

I realise that there will have been mandatory rematch clauses in some of the contracts for these fights, and that a lot of them were ones that the public wanted to see, but even so, a dark side of the sport is revealed in cases like Harrison vs Polo; the challenger clearly did enough to win a decision yet he was robbed by the judges and hasn't been given a rematch, which he clearly deserves. I can't really get behind our "sporting heroes" when this kind of stuff goes on behind the scenes. When Harrison lost his title to Medina, an immediate rematch was in order then, of course.

Come on Marquez, give him a good hiding

This will make a boss fight.

Morales and Pacquiao are fighting for the third time

And Morales shouldn't be making Super Feather.

JimJim wrote:If it comes off I'll be rooting for Marquez to be honest. No way on gods green earth did Scott deserve that appalling decision against Victor Polo, and Polo has never been granted a rematch. Morales and Pacquiao are fighting for the third time in as many years, ditto for Clinton Woods and Glen Johnson, Barrera is taking on Juarez in an immediate rematch, Roy Jones faced Tarver in back to back fights and Jermain Taylor and Floyd Mayweather faced Bernard Hopkins and Jose Luis Castillo, respectively, in immediate rematches.

I realise that there will have been mandatory rematch clauses in some of the contracts for these fights, and that a lot of them were ones that the public wanted to see, but even so, a dark side of the sport is revealed in cases like Harrison vs Polo; the challenger clearly did enough to win a decision yet he was robbed by the judges and hasn't been given a rematch, which he clearly deserves. I can't really get behind our "sporting heroes" when this kind of stuff goes on behind the scenes. When Harrison lost his title to Medina, an immediate rematch was in order then, of course.

Come on Marquez, give him a good hiding

Yes I must admit that decision really did stick in my craw, I just could not really see how the judges could justify those scorecards. I thought Polo had won that one pretty clearly, Harrison was just wading forward eating shots for most of the fight, especially the second half and took a right pasting in the last round to seal a win for Polo.

I have nothing against Harrison whatsoever, he's got some personal problems which I hope he gets over and I look forward to him returning to the ring, but he should have lost his title that night.

Although the right man did get the decision, and that's the main thing, I'll never understand how one judge made Scott Harrison the winner in the first Manual Medina fight. Shocking!

I'm afraid I am much more cynical about dodgy decisions. We all know there are two kinds of decision - close ones that could go either way, and then the ones that fall under the category of "daylight fxxking robbery".

In my opinion the Harrison vs Polo outcome was dishonest. I don't believe that three honest judges could have sat at ringside, watched that fight, and declared Harrison the winner (well, 2 of them if it was a split verdict).

Ditto for Johnny Nelson's shocking performance 3 years ago in Derby against that lanky guy from Panama. No way did Nelson deserve to retain his title.

While both Nelson and Harrison went on to give better performances in their next title defences, that is hardly the point. I think that both of the fights mentioned above involved deliberate dishonesty on the part of the judges, who were put in a difficult position when the heavily favoured champions put in abysmal performances while the hand-picked opponents boxed above themselves.

In a fair world, we'd seen bent boxing judges sent to jail for corruption. That would soon eradicate these kinds of decisions. Or at the very least, if jail is too harsh, these people should never be allowed to judge a boxing match again.

British boxing fans often feel sorry for boxers like Michael Brodie (vs Larios), Lennox Lewis (vs Holyfield, 1st fight), Robin Reid (vs Ottke) and so on, and rightly so, but our own homegrown controversies never seem to lead to rematches being granted. A few months ago the entire UK boxing industry was up in arms about Damaen Kelly being ripped off in his European bantamweight title fight, and the board made a fuss and have apparently got a rematch.

I know the board are there to protect British fighters but they should be impartial right across the board, as we expect overseas' commissions to be. To the best of my knowledge they did jack sxxt about either the Nelson or Harrison verdicts. It stinks because as much as I want British fighters to do well, both should have lost their titles in those fights.

Just for record Harrison v Polo was a draw.

I thought Polo won too.

Indeed it was, but Polo should have gotten the win.

It's dangerous and all too easy sometimes to sling accusations of impropriety around, but that was a perfect example of where the scoring clearly seems to have gone to the house fighter for that very reason. So many of those rounds, Harrison was just getting picked off at will, and his own work was so ineffective. I wish I could find my reports on the fight, but I was pretty outraged at the time by it.

I've been at York Hall before, when a Hungarian fighter I think it was gave the house fighter a right spanking and the bout was declared a draw, the crowd, who you would have expected to be 'on side' booed the decision lustily and jeered the house fighter on the way out.

It reflects badly on British boxing and boxing on the whole every single time this happens. Until they do away with hospitality being extended to judges and other officials by the promoter, judges are always going to be potentially swayed to find in favour of the house fighter. I believe that a lot of these things are subliminal, scoring is subjective anyway, and it's not hard to be influenced in your thinking without being overtly corrupt. I don't think that there's a lot of envelopes changing hands and that sort of thing, it's more to do with 'getting on' in the business if you are a ref, official or judge. Making waves and costing promoters potentially millions of pounds by finding against a marquee fighter is not advantageous to a judge if he doesn't want to find his appointment for a fight being contested by a promoter. Although it shouldn't happen, from what I understand it's not unknown for promoters to insist on certain judges not being appointed for a contest.

Looks like both Marquez bros are getting WBO title shots. personally i'm glad Juan Manuel is staying at featherweight. Everyone knows he beat Chris John in Indonesia. Now all he needs is another world title to get his career back on track. As a mark of JMM's class, he showed just how to go about business against Victor Polo, whom he beat on the Corrales-Castillo i undercard.

I look forward to seeing him rattle off plenty of title defenses. Most likely is that if he beats Scott harrison - who is a good name - Gary Shaw will try to line up something big.

Rafael Marquez, it seems, is going to move up to fight the Israel Vasquez- Jhonny Gonzalez winner, at super bantamweight. But Gonzalez-Vasquez could be an epic that might warrant a rematch or two. So it might be hard for Rafael to fit in.

It is sad that he won't try to fight WBC bantam champ Hozumi Hasegawa, the classy southpaw who KO'd the great Veeraphol Sahaprom. But as long as I see him in a big fight it doesn't matter. I guess.

jamesmcdonnell wrote:Indeed it was, but Polo should have gotten the win.

It's dangerous and all too easy sometimes to sling accusations of impropriety around, but that was a perfect example of where the scoring clearly seems to have gone to the house fighter for that very reason. So many of those rounds, Harrison was just getting picked off at will, and his own work was so ineffective. I wish I could find my reports on the fight, but I was pretty outraged at the time by it.

I've been at York Hall before, when a Hungarian fighter I think it was gave the house fighter a right spanking and the bout was declared a draw, the crowd, who you would have expected to be 'on side' booed the decision lustily and jeered the house fighter on the way out.

It reflects badly on British boxing and boxing on the whole every single time this happens. Until they do away with hospitality being extended to judges and other officials by the promoter, judges are always going to be potentially swayed to find in favour of the house fighter. I believe that a lot of these things are subliminal, scoring is subjective anyway, and it's not hard to be influenced in your thinking without being overtly corrupt. I don't think that there's a lot of envelopes changing hands and that sort of thing, it's more to do with 'getting on' in the business if you are a ref, official or judge. Making waves and costing promoters potentially millions of pounds by finding against a marquee fighter is not advantageous to a judge if he doesn't want to find his appointment for a fight being contested by a promoter. Although it shouldn't happen, from what I understand it's not unknown for promoters to insist on certain judges not being appointed for a contest.

It's funny, but it used to be that judges in British set fights were polite to the visitor. McCallum-Graham was so close that it was hard to choose between them. Andries-Harding III was a great and a close fight, but Dennis landed the better shots throughout. Many ppl still think that Billy Hardy beat orlando Canizales.

"It's dangerous and all too easy sometimes to sling accusations of impropriety around, but that was a perfect example of where the scoring clearly seems to have gone to the house fighter for that very reason"

Nobody forces people to become judges, and if they're going to do it, they have to expect to be held to high standards of honesty. I'd say that any judge who could watch a tape of Harrison vs Polo and score it even or in Harrison's favour should never be allowed to officiate a contest. There's close fights, and then there are fights where 99% of observers score it the same way.

I regard those two judges to be dishonest. I am not claiming they were paid off; as you say, they might simply be guided by a feeling of doing what is right for their own career but whatever the motive, its wrong. Polo should have been crowned champion that night and he got robbed by the official who scored it for Harrison, and the other who scored it a draw.

Of course, its hardly the first bad decision in the sport, nor the worst, but I despair at how this kind of thing gets tolerated. Its not incompetence, its dishonesty, in my humble opinion.

Thanks for the correction, THEBUTCH These dodgy verdicts do nothing for the boxers themselves, I'm sure Scott Harrison had nothing to do with the unfair verdict and no doubt he would prefer to see an honest decision himself. He lost to Medina and then regained the title, he could have perhaps won it a third time against Polo, making a bit of history for himself, instead of having a black mark on his record, by that I mean a win that he didn't deserve. Scott always strikes me as being a fair and honest fella.

One bad decision and your turning on Scott for that?

Blame the judges for scoring it. Not up to Scott who wins.

Ditto for Johnny Nelson's shocking performance 3 years ago in Derby against that lanky guy from Panama. No way did Nelson deserve to retain his title.

Didn't Jones test positive for Steroids though?

So Nelson did deserve it if thats true.

Max Molyneux wrote:

Ditto for Johnny Nelson's shocking performance 3 years ago in Derby against that lanky guy from Panama. No way did Nelson deserve to retain his title.

Didn't Jones test positive for Steroids though?

So Nelson did deserve it if thats true.

some sort of banned substance known for shedding weight (ironically, he is the 'Expanding Man', having gradually come up, from 154, 168 to cruiser). jones is never allowed to fight in the UK again. nelson was going through a bad patch - the jones fight was the time of the kidnapping plot against his family - but johnny was TOTALLY GRACELESS after the decision.

shameful night of boxing. not forgetting that the fight itself was pathetic. weird as well, with Jones fighting southpaw which I've never seen him do since.

i don't think warren ever staged another nelson fight after that.

Well Spotted VM on the Nelson/Warren relationship. It was after the Jones fight that Nelson all of a sudden became inactive - he was defending very often before that.

An autobiography after his career is officially over would be far more interesting than most of his fights.

viciousmaussa wrote:

Max Molyneux wrote:

Ditto for Johnny Nelson's shocking performance 3 years ago in Derby against that lanky guy from Panama. No way did Nelson deserve to retain his title.

Didn't Jones test positive for Steroids though?

So Nelson did deserve it if thats true.

some sort of banned substance known for shedding weight (ironically, he is the 'Expanding Man', having gradually come up, from 154, 168 to cruiser). jones is never allowed to fight in the UK again. nelson was going through a bad patch - the jones fight was the time of the kidnapping plot against his family - but johnny was TOTALLY GRACELESS after the decision.

shameful night of boxing. not forgetting that the fight itself was pathetic. weird as well, with Jones fighting southpaw which I've never seen him do since.

i don't think warren ever staged another nelson fight after that.

Weird, Jones actually started at 147 not 154, and he has to take a substance to lose weight at 190!

Scott did get a 'get of jail card' against Polo. Fact is that we have not seen him at his peak since he defended against McCullough. He used to be a box fighter but since then he's been a brawler.
He was able to walk through Sam Kebede, Walter Estrada, William Abelyan and Michael Brodie and ultimately over powered Medina in the rematch and he did what he to do to retain his title against a very negative but still dangerous Nedal Hussein.
He was very poor though in the first Median fight and Polo bout where he was lazy and one dimensional.
As for bad decisions though I mean they are pretty common both sides of the boarder. I can remember several occassions where Eubank was given gifts and Benn's win over Malinga remains highly suspect.