To the surprise of absolutely nobody who saw the fight, the team of cruiserweight Krzysztof Glowacki has appealed the result of this past weekend’s World Boxing Super Series fight with Mairis Breidis. On paper, Breidis secured his place in the WBSS final, against Yunier Dorticos, to be fought at a date and venue to be announced later this year. Yet there is way more to it than that.
The fight, which officially went into the books (for now at least) as a third-round stoppage win for Breidis, was fraught with controversy. Both men committed fouls in round-two: Glowacki hitting Breidis with a hard shot to the back of the head, Breidis then coming right back with a nasty elbow that landed clean across the chin. Glowacki went down, was ordered to get back up by veteran ref Robert Byrd – who had a pretty bad night altogether – and then Breidis was deducted a point.
If that wasn’t bad enough, what followed was shocking. Breidis hit and hurt Glowacki, who was no doubt still stunned from the elbow he had received to the jaw, and decked him again, this time legally. Glowacki beat the count just before the bell – but then the second-round continued, for around ten-seconds. Byrd had failed to hear the gong and he allowed Breidis to bang away at an out of it Glowacki and send him down a second time; by which point Glowacki’s corner-men were going nuts on the ring apron.
Then the third-round began and Breidis finished Glowacki off, sending him down for a third time just seconds into the session, with Byrd then halting proceedings. But now, as was widely expected, Glowacki, via his team, has appealed his defeat and he certainly has just cause to do so. Once the governing bodies involved look at the tape of the fight, they will see the deliberate elbow thrown by Breidis and they will see as clear as day how the second-round overran by a substantial margin.
Who knows if the result will be changed to a DQ, a no-contest. Maybe this is what should happen, with the two men having to fight each other again. This would of course put a serious delay in the final of the WBSS but this is something that may prove unavoidable.
Glowacki must be treated fairly, which is something that did not happen to him Riga, Latvia.
