Moments after Abner Mares defeated former champion Joseph Agbeko in a highly controversial fight that many felt was influenced by referee Russell Mora's inability to make the right calls, Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez posted the following message on his official Twitter account, "I Love Russell Mora @GoldenBoyBoxing finally gets a call!" There's no doubt that everyone at Golden Boy Promotions is overjoyed with the fact that Mares became their first homegrown champion, but given the controversy that will definitely be talked about in the coming days and weeks, one has to wonder if it was wise for Gomez to post those comments so quickly after the fight, especially considering that referee Mora missed an obvious low blow by Mares in the 11th round, ruling it a knockdown despite the fact that it literally occurred right in front of his eyes.
"I don't help the fighters. I enforce the rules. First and foremost, I have to enforce the rules. Those punches were on the belt line. It's a fair punch. I have to call it fair," referee Mora would tell Showtime's Jim Gray immediately after the fight during a post-fight interview. He was then given an opportunity to review a slow-motion instant replay of the 11th round knockdown, which clearly showed Mares landing a low blow directly on the cup and below the belt line. When asked if he still thought he made the right call, Mora replied, "It sure...it has a different viewpoint from looking at here in slow motion. When I saw it live, I saw that it was a fair punch on the beltline. That was my call."
Again, there's no denying that everyone at Golden Boy Promotions is thrilled about the outcome of the fight, and newly-crowned champino Abner Mares should also be proud of his performance and the fact that he just won his first world title. That being said, I'm not so sure if it's a wise idea to praise the performance of referee Russell Mora, which Showtime commentator Al Bernstein called "the most disgraceful performance of a referee that I've seen in the past 15 years."
UPDATE: It appears FightHype's story about Eric Gomez's tweet has prompted him to delete it from his Twitter account. Credit to Gomez for removing his public endorsement of a referee that's under a great deal of scrutiny from the boxing community at this time, but in case there's any doubt to the validity of this story, we took a screen capture of the original post. Check out the thumbnail below or click here to view an enlarged picture.
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