Judges scorecards were suspect and heavily in favor of the house fighter
July 24, 2021
Fantasy Springs Casino
Indio, California, USA
Golden Boy Promotions
Streamed by: DAZN
After accepting the bout on two weeks notice, making weight concessions, and still agreeing to fight after his opponent couldn’t make the agreed upon weight, Josue “El Zurdo de Oro” Morales appeared to get the best of his opponent Hector Valdez, but somehow still lost by unanimous decision.
Valdez, who is signed to Golden Boy Promotions, landed a few good punches here and there, but hit mostly air all night. He was totally missing punches at times, and having his punches easily blocked at other times, never able to come up with any answers for Morales’ deft movement, quick punches and defensive superiority.
Morales, not known for his punching power, landed speedy scoring combinations in spurts, in between jabbing, feinting, and pivoting Valdez into knots.
In situations where there was no room to maneuver in the small, “punchers” ring provided by Golden Boy Promotions, Morales would employ a high guard that seemed to be inspired by Winky Wright, blocking mostly everything and rarely taking a solid punch.
Clutch City Boxing had the bout scored 5 rounds in favor of Morales to 3 rounds for Valdez, by way of points scored and superior ring generalship.
Naturally the DAZN production team, commentators, etc are going to favor the Golden Boy Promotions fighters given their affiliation and common interests in promoting Golden Boy’s fighters, but the blatant favoritism of the entire broadcast took away from what were supposed to be a professional boxing contests in my opinion.
During the eight round contest between Valdez and Morales, commentators Sergio Mora and Brian Kenny virtually ignored and did not comment on most of Morales’ offense, and would only give begrudging credit for his classy defense. On the other hand Valdez was given credit and praised for anything he was able to accomplish, and some things he wasn’t even accomplishing.
After Morales clearly won the first three rounds and began losing the fourth round, Mora and Kenny incredibly began stating that Valdez was on the verge of stopping Morales and being the first to either knock him down and/or out.
The three judges at ringside apparently didn’t watch the fight and only listened to the announcing team of Mora and Kenny, giving Morales zero rounds on two scorecards and only one round on one scorecard, giving Valdez a unanimous decision win.
The favoritism displayed by DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions is at least somewhat understandable, again based on their interests in building the reputations of their fighters and moving them up the ranks.
On the other hand, the obvious bias the California State Commission judges displayed last night left much to be desired. Again, in my opinion.
The almost criminal matchmaking for the Estrada vs Adkins bout should also be mentioned, as the badly overmatched Adkins suffered a terrible knockout loss at the hands of the experienced and elite level, professional skills of Estrada.
Estrada shouldn’t be faulted for doing her job and she’s proven in the past that she’s willing to face the best competition available, sometimes even fighting above her weight class to do so.
The matchmakers and California State Commission that made and sanctioned that bout should be faulted however, and questions should be asked in reference to how that bout even materialized.
