Kevin Sunich

For­mer chair­man of T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol, Mel­chior Tay­lor, says it was a sad day for box­ing in T&T on Fri­day.

He was re­fer­ring to the de­ci­sion by the judges to give T&T's Ria Ram­nar­ine the fight by a split de­ci­sion win over Venezue­lan Ana Fer­nan­dez, when they squared off in a fly­weight bat­tle at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sport Are­na, in Ch­agua­nas. Tay­lor, who at­tend­ed the five-bout card, said af­ter Ram­nar­ine did not an­swer the bell for the tenth round, ref­er­ee Tom­my Thomas should have gone over to the Venezue­lan and raised her hand, de­clar­ing her the win­ner.

"I was dis­ap­point­ed that it even went to the score cards, since it was clear that Fer­nan­dez had won all nine rounds. "I've seen a host of bad de­ci­sions, but none worse than this. Even a ba­by would have been able to see the win­ner," said Tay­lor. Com­ment­ing on yes­ter­day's News­day re­port which quot­ed Ram­nar­ine as say­ing the judges de­duct­ed points from Fer­nan­dez for her tac­tics, Tay­lor said no judge had that au­thor­i­ty. "At no time can any judge deduct points from a fight­er. That de­ci­sion has to be made sole­ly by the ref­er­ee. Oth­er­wise, no points could be de­duct­ed.

"If the round is a draw, it's scored 10/10; for a win it's scored 10/9; and for a knock-down it's scored 10/8. "There was no knock-down, and clear­ly there was no drawn round, as the Venezue­lan won all the rounds," said the for­mer box­ing board chair­man. He said of­fi­cials from the two gov­ern­ing bod­ies: the World Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (WBA) and the World Box­ing Coun­cil (WBC) should have gone to the judges to clar­i­fy the score­cards, since they would have seen the fight for them­selves. Ram­nar­ine was al­so quot­ed as say­ing that ref­er­ee Thomas did a poor job, since he failed to of­fer her any pro­tec­tion against the Venezue­lan, who she said was us­ing un­sports­man­like tac­tics.

Ef­forts to con­tact the WBA in­ter­im and WBC Cabofe cham­pi­on Ria and her man­ag­er, yes­ter­day, proved fu­tile, but Buxo Potts is­sued a re­lease at around 5 pm. Mean­while, ref­er­ee Thomas de­clined to com­ment, in­di­cat­ing that he was ad­vised by his boss­es in the World Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (WBA) not to have any fur­ther dis­cus­sion with the me­dia with re­gards to the bout. Tay­lor, who of­fi­ci­at­ed in more than 300 fights, said the new ex­ec­u­tive which took of­fice in Ju­ly, last year, should seek se­ri­ous­ly to do some­thing about what tran­spired in Ch­agua­nas on Ju­ly 31.

�2 In light of all the con­cerns and ques­tions be­ing raised by the sport­ing pub­lic, Ria Ram­nar­ine's man­age­ment yes­ter­day is­sued a let­ter to the me­dia:

"I feel com­pelled to write this let­ter. I feel bad about the bout against Ana on Fri­day night. I do not like to win this way. The peo­ple didn't un­der­stand what was go­ing on and hence didn't un­der­stand the re­sults. At face val­ue, the fight was close and the de­ci­sion could have gone ei­ther way. The main prob­lem is that the ref­er­ee didn't do his job. If he had warned Ana for the re­peat­ed low blows and head­butts, then peo­ple would un­der­stand the scores. I can on­ly guess the judges took a very dim view of the re­peat­ed un­warned fouls. Al­so, had she been warned ear­ly, Ana would have tak­en stock and the fouls would not have con­tin­ued.

But with no warn­ings and no points tak­en, nat­u­ral­ly she con­tin­ued as she had the all clear to do so. I was hit with low blows re­peat­ed­ly from the very first round and that threw me off my game plan. I was forced to do dou­ble work pro­tect­ing my­self in­stead of be­ing of­fen­sive. I will take noth­ing from Ana though, she is a great fight­er and I have re­spect for her. Even be­fore the fight I re­spect­ed her as I do all my op­po­nents. When she came in over­weight at the weigh-in, my coach dis­missed it and said it was not a prob­lem. She would have had to strip to make weight and we re­al­ly did not want to put her through that."

"In the ninth round, the head­butt was very, very clear. The ref­er­ee ac­knowl­edged it, yet he did not warn Ana or take a point, so the crowd again did not know what was hap­pen­ing. I dug deep and fin­ished the round. By the end of it I was see­ing dou­ble and in­di­cat­ed that to the ref­er­ee. He said I should fight the 10th and kept in­sist­ing I should do so. But by that time my eye was swollen and one shot to it could have done per­ma­nent dam­age. How could I risk such? I had no idea of the scores at that point; my on­ly con­cern was my eye. In hind­sight I won­der why the ref­er­ee kept in­sist­ing I go in­to the tenth. I thought the ref­er­ee's first pri­or­i­ty was the fight­er's safe­ty re­gard­less of any­thing else, now I am not so sure.

No warn­ings for re­peat­ed low blows, head butts and then try­ing to send me in to fight with blurred vi­sion? I pre­fer to lose a fight and live to fight an­oth­er day." "If on­ly the ref­er­ee had done his job, we would not be in this sit­u­a­tion to­day." "As far as a re­match goes, I hope my man­age­ment can work some­thing out so that Ana is giv­en a chance, and this whole thing can be cleared up."

"To Ana, I am sor­ry about all this. You are a great fight­er, keep up the fight­ing spir­it you have and you will be­come a world cham­pi­on."