The Nevada State Athletic Commission, under fire for the egregious scoring done by C.J. Ross on September 14th while judging Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s fight against Saul "Canelo" Alvarez, has selected a referee and judges for Timothy Bradley's upcoming bout with Juan Manuel Marquez.
Robert Byrd will be the referee for the October 12th bout, while Robert Hoyle, Patricia Morse Jarman and Glenn Feldman will score.
This is notable in the case of Bradley, who scored a shocking win over Manny Pacquiao despite announcers and fight fans as a majority seeing that bout as an easy Pacquiao victory. Ross was also a judge in that debacle; thankfully she has stepped down since ruling Mayweather vs. Alvarez a draw and is nowhere near this match.
NSAC chairman Bill Brady promised a more open process in the wake of Ross' inexplicable scorecard.
For Bradley-Marquez, executive director Keith Kizer held an open teleconference involving both fighters' camps, giving both sides to insert their input as well as argue against certain possibilities.
Byrd has refereed two previous Bradley fights, as well as one Marquez bout back in 2003. None of the judges has worked a Bradley fight, however Hoyle was one of the judges in Marquez's third matchup against Pacquiao, scoring it a draw.
These choices seem to be designed to shield Bradley from accusation of corruption that dogged him in the aftermath of his victory over Pacquiao, which should have been a crowning moment in his career.
If he can defeat Marquez soundly, his career figures to get back on the upward trajectory he surely thought was to follow his most notable win. Since then, he's fought just once, a war against relatively unknown Ruslan Provodnikov. The brawler floored Bradley twice, and was on the verge of a stoppage several times, but Bradley heroically fought back on multiple occasions.
"It just made me come out of that dark place, man, and I wasn't willing to go down. And I fought back, I fought back, man, and the ref won't stop the fight as long as you're throwing punches," Bradley said.
After that fight, he believed angry boxing fans forgave him for earning that fateful decision. "I think a lot of people gave me respect and gravitated toward me after that fight, after they saw the heart and determination and the will that I have to win a fight even when I'm faced with adversity or even if I do get hurt."
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