By: Benjie Varella – It was a night of controversy at the Madison Square Garden as the two world title bouts resulted to first, a technical draw between Ivan Calderon (32-0-1, 6Kos) of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico and Rodel Mayol of the Philippines for the WBO light flyweight championship, then for the main event, a split decision victory for Miguel Cotto, another Puerto Rican to retain his WBO welterweight title against Joshua Clottey of Ghana.
For the main undercard event, judges scored it 58-56 for Mayol, 58-56 for Calderon while the third saw it dead even at 57-57..
For the Cotto-Clottey match, one judge scored it 114-113 for Clottey while the other two saw Cotto winning by bigger edge, 116-111 and 115-112.
The match between Calderon and Mayol was stopped in the 6th round due to an accidental headbutt by the Filipino which resulted to an excessive bleeding from Calderon’s forehead. But that was not the first headbutt of the match. The two boxers clashed heads in the 3rd, 4th and 5th round of the match without any points deducted from any of the two boxers.
It was an ugly scene as well for the Cotto versus Clottey bout. The Puerto Rican was bloodied due to an accidental headbutt from the third round until the final round.
Clottey was decked inside the final seconds of the first round but fought back for the final eleven rounds of the match. He was tackled at the 5th round but no penalty was served against Cotto.
This time, the two fighters were both suffering from the “headbutt accident” and “tackling incident”.
Aside from the bloody and dirty boxing matches at the Madison Garden, it is also surprising and ironically, the three judges from each bout saw the results differently.
It was not unanimous, the decision was divided among them!
To settle the controversies of the Calderon-Mayol technical draw and Cotto’s split decision win over Clottey, a rematch between these two pairs should take place.
It’s only fair that Mayol and Clottey be given another chance.