Fans who tuned into last night’s card in Manchester that was topped by Filip Hrgovic’s win over Joe Joyce, know all about the controversial nature regarding the ending to the British heavyweight title fight between co-challengers (the belt being vacant) David Adeleye and Jeamie TKV.
In round six, with the two fighters being broken up by third man Ron Kearney, Adeleye let loose with a left hook that landed flush on the chin, sending TKV crashing to the mat.
Replays show that the referee called “break” two times, and that he then tapped TKV on the glove, with TKV then doing as he was instructed and breaking from the clinch, at which point Adeleye’s blow connected. TKV got back up but he was badly hurt and he was soon down again, with Kearney then stopping the fight.
Now, as expected, TKV’s promoter, Ben Shalom, is absolutely fuming, to the point that he says he will launch an official appeal.
“What I’ve just witnessed was one of the most disgraceful things I’ve seen in my career,” Shalom told The Ring. “To see a referee call “break” twice, take someone’s arm and for him to actually count him out was one of the most crazy pieces of refereeing I’ve ever seen. It has to be overturned. I’m not even blaming David Adeleye, the referee has had an absolute nightmare, Jeamie was cruising the fight, it was getting easier for him in there, I was thinking ‘how’s he switched off there?’ from where I was. And then I saw the ref. It’s unbelievable, actually unbelievable, there’s no other result, David Adeleye didn’t win that fight, it has to be overturned.”
It will be interesting to see what the folks at the British Boxing Board of Control do with regards to this one. It was, as surely everyone has to agree, a punch on the break, and a quite blatantly-seeming one, from Adeleye. But we’ve seen so many appeals launched over the years, with pretty much nothing coming of them. Will things be different here?
As far as seeing a rematch between Adeleye and TKV, last night’s fight, expected by many of us to be a thriller, was instead a pretty dull fight until the controversial ending. Do we really want to see it again? That said, TKV absolutely deserves something after being the victim of what could certainly be called a cheap-shot the way he was last night.
“It’s terrible, terrible refereeing and it’s lost Jeamie a fight he was winning quite comfortably,” Shalom added.
