Just hours out from their huge heavyweight rematch this coming Saturday, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury have been thrown into discussions regarding a change to the judging panel.
This past May, Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk clashed in one of the biggest fights in heavyweight boxing history when they fought to a close split decision.
Although the judge’s scorecards weren’t a controversial topic in their inaugural meeting, the judging panel has become a big part of their rematch this Saturday and it has caused a last-minute argument between the two camps.
Judge falls ill as Frank Warren suggests a coin flip to decide replacement judge
Scheduled to judge one of the biggest fights in the sport’s history, were Gerardo Martinez (Puerto Rico), Patrick Morley (Chicago), and Fernando Barbosa (Miami), however, Barbosa didn’t travel to Riyadh after being taken ill.
With that, Steve Weisfeld (New Jersey) was called in as a replacement on short notice and was scheduled to take his place on the judging table on Saturday night.
However, Ignacio Robles is also reportedly flying into Saudi Arabia to fill the vacant role, which has led to an argument between Fury and Usyk’s teams.
Both teams are currently favoring differing judges which has led to a dispute regarding who will step in. Queensberry Promotions’, Frank Warren, has suggested the two teams flip a coin with the winner getting the deciding vote.
“There are two standby judges, both of them are flying in and we have got to decide which one of them it is going to be,” Warren told Sky Sports.
“We want one of them and (Usyk’s) camp wants the other, so I’ve suggested we flip a coin. This will get sorted. Use a bit of common sense, and actually both camps are very, very professional and know what they have to do,” he continued.
Steve Weisfeld and Ignacio Robles’ history of judging
Weisfeld is considered a veteran judge in the game having judged over 2000 fights. He has a history of judging both ‘The Gypsy King’s’ and Usyk’s fights, scoring the Ukrainian’s first fight against Anthony Joshua 116-112 in Usyk’s favor.
The New Jersey native scored Fury’s second and third fights against Deontay Wilder but his scorecards of course weren’t required.
Robles on the other hand has only judged 743 fights and so is considered less experienced than his counterpart.
However, the three judges won’t be the only ones judging the bout on the night as Turki Alalshikh announced that an AI judge will also score the card, free from human bias.
The AI judge of course will not impact the official results and will be used as an experiment, as the consensus ‘Savior of Boxing’ continues to seek ways to improve the sport.