Every day, something new happens and this is a first for the boxing challenge- The Hamburglar arrives for a decision that saw the correct fighter win, but everything else was wrong.
Other than the absolutely inept decision, there was nothing to suggest that anything about the third of the three awful mismatches masquerading as main events was different than the other two cards promoted by PBC and broadcast by Fox.
First, the co-feature was canceled between former junior lightweight and lightweight champion Rances Barthelemy and Alberto Puello for a worthless WBA "title", leaving another uninspiring main event with welterweights Yordenis Ugas against Abel Ramos for another WBA "title" of little value.
Ugas is a top seven fighter in the division having lost only a split decision to Shawn Porter in the last seven years in a fight that could have easily been given to Ugas (I scored the fight even at 114) and Ramos was thoroughly outclassed against Bryant Perrella for all but the final half of the final round before a miracle finish and an awful stoppage with one second to go gave Ramos a win that he really didn't deserve.
Perrella is a top twenty type welterweight, a solid step below Ugas and by extension, Ramos looked to be two classes below Ugas in quality.
The fight was about what everyone expected as Ugas dominated with a jab that couldn't miss and right hands that smacked Ramos as he bulled his way in.The rounds rolled on and repeated themselves, Ramos caught between aggressive and befuddled while Ugas scored consistently but seemed to content to score an easy win.
Ugas won the first ten rounds on my card, the eleventh could have gone to either man and Ramos won the twelfth and even wobbled Ugas briefly, but not seriously.
This is where I would usually stop and speculate what could be next for Ugas, but the Hamburglar was about to arrive.
The first tip was Jimmy Lennon announcing a split decision.
That alone caused my mouth to drop open.
Then the first scorecard from veteran judge Lou Moret- 117-111 for RAMOS!
In rounds, that is NINE to three for Ramos in a fight that I was generous would have scored 118-110 for Ugas!
My actual score was 119-109 for Ugas.
The other two judges (Zachary Young and Edward Hernandez) salvaged the fight by scoring for Ugas to get the winner correctly named, but even their cards were terrible with both scoring 115-113 (7-5).
There is no way that Ramos won five rounds, let alone Moret's nine, and all three of the judges need to be looked at seriously at being not allowed to do this job anymore.
On a night that the story should be another dominant performance in the main event that featured two classes of fighters for yet another poor attempt by PBC to establish a national television presence, the judging in this fight took the promoter and the network off the hook.
By changing the story, the narrative now is the terrible work of the judges, not Yordenis Ugas or the awful cards by PBC and that is boxing in a nutshell.
Only Boxing takes a bad thing and makes it worse.
Ramon Malpica and I each scored one point for the Ugas victory in the boxing challenge.
The total is now 104-98 in my favor.
