The referee who oversaw Deontay Wilder vs. Derek Chisora on Saturday night in London’s O2 Arena will not be disciplined for his poor performance, according to the British Boxing Board of Control. That has a lot of people angry, considering how atrocious U.K. ref Mark Bates was at keeping the wild fight under control.
Amongst the crazy things that happened, Chisora’s coach jumped into the ring in the middle of the 1st round and his corner helped push him back into the ring in the 8th. Both are DQ-worthy,
but Bates didn’t issue a point deduction or warning. Bates also stepped in to stop Wilder from potentially knocking Chisora down in the 3rd, and took a questionable point from Wilder in the 8th.
Longtime boxing commentator Al Bernstein was clearly unimpressed by the British Boxing Board of Control’s decision not to sanction Bates, calling his performance “the most biased piece of refereeing I have ever seen.”
“So, apparently we now know that the bias by so many referees in U.K. to protect British fighters is not rogue action by those refs. Apparently it is condoned by the British board,” Bernstein wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Given what Bates did in this match there is literally no other way to interpret this ruling.”
“He literally called timeouts to save Chisora, took a point away from Wilder for no infraction and just about everything he did in there was designed to help Chisora, including letting he corner push him back into the ring, and barely paying attention to him rope rushing into the ring. If not a DQ how about a point deduction?”
Deontay Wilder claimed he also took several punches to the back of the head during the bout that went unpunished.
“That referee shouldn’t be allowed to ref again,” he declared following the fight.
Wilder’s manager Shelly Finkel also laid out a long list of mistakes made by the referee.
“One, if your corner enters the ring, it’s an automatic disqualification,” he said (via The Ring). “Number two, if you’re knocked out of the ring you have 20 seconds to get in, but you’re not allowed to be helped by your corner. Number three, if you get hit and you’re falling but you grab the rope, it’s an automatic eight-count. Number four, if you get hit after the bell, it’s the ref’s discretion to take a point off. Number five, when Derek stepped back and touched his eye, that’s not allowed. You either stop the fight or you don’t interfere.”
“These are the rules of the game. I’m glad my guy won because I thought he was going to get robbed.”
It was a close thing. Despite Wilder’s more dominant performance, judges scored the fight a split decision with Wilder getting 115–111 and 115–113 scores while Chisora was awarded a 112-115 (watch the highlights here). That’s boxing for you, especially in the U.K., and nothing is going to be done about it.
