Lots of Rules to Remember?

Every sport has rules no one is really sure of except the officials. Everyone remember when Donovan McNabb didn't know that only such overtime is allowed in NFL games? He wasn't the only person to forget that, at a certain point in the game, the officials will simply call a tie.

Boxing is worse, because every state has its own rules. Some are relatively constant and some make lots of sense. Some are relatively odd or fly against what everyone considers established convention. Everyone in boxing knows that a thrown towel is a universal sign of surrender, but people tend to think that it is part of the rules. It isn't on the books in New York. Just ask Max Schmeling and Yuri Foreman about it.

It really surprised me, however, to see Steve Farhood make a pretty basic mistake on Friday's ShoBox broadcast. Farhood is a guy with encyclopedic knowledge of boxing, who is usually the sane one on the broadcast team regardless of which team he's on. Yet he couldn't understand (or professed not to understand) why Dr. Lou Moret took a point from Chris Avalos when Avalos and Khabir Suleymanov got into another exchange just seconds after Avalos scored a flash knockdown in the third round. For anyone who got carried away by the injustice along with Farhood, I'll explain.

For years there was no rule requiring a fighter to go to a neutral corner after a knockdown. The rules prevented one man from hitting the other while he was down and that was it. Many great fighters of the 1910s and early 1920s would stand over their fallen opponents, wait for them to get up, and beat them back to the canvas. Jack Dempsey was particularly infamous for this behavior, but ironically he was responsible for the rules allowing it being changed.

In Semptember of 1926, Dempsey lost the world heavyweight championship to Gene Tunney by decision. During negotiations for a rematch Dempsey began to be concerned about Tunney mugging him, as he rose, after a knockdown. Dempsey and his handlers requested an addition to the rules: after a knockdown, the fighter who scored the knockdown would retire to the nearest neutral corner and action would not resume until the referee had completed his count and allowed the action to continue. To add poetry to irony, Dempsey forgot his own requested rules change in the heat of the fight after scoring a knockdown himself and the result was the famous "Long Count." Despite the great scandal of the incident in the minds of some of Dempsey's loyal fans and hardcore boxing fans who didn't understand the agreed-upon rules change, Dempsey's innovation is now part of boxing's official rulebook.

Avalos, after scoring a knockdown, was immediately required to move to the nearest neutral corner and allow Suleymanov an eight count. One can make allowances for Avalos if one wishes. It is true that Suleymanov jumped back to his feet and immediately resumed punching, perhaps in hope that the referee would miss the knockdown. However, Dr. Moret went to quite some difficulty to break the two fighters and begin the eight count and Avalos specifically disobeyed Moret's instructions to break. Avalos had earlier knocked Suleymanov down on the break, so this was not a first offense.

Farhood appeared to think that Suleymanov's quick return to his feet and "the heat of the moment" should have allowed Avalos a pass, as Suleymanov was not hit while on the canvas or in the act of rising. However, the rules require the mandatory eight count and the fight is not allowed to resume until the referee has satisfied himself that the fallen man can continue. If one is inclined to cut Avalos some slack because of the circumstances, that's fine: until he refuses to obey the referee's instructions to break so that the required count can be given. Dr. Moret had to physically separate the two men and Avalos visibly argued with him after the separation and deliberately left the neutral corner after he was put there. I think it's safe to say that the real reason for the point deduction was what may have appeared to Dr. Moret as willful defiance of his instructions and an attempt to argue after the fact.

This is the second time that Farhood has appeared to forget the requirement to return to the neutral corner and the mandatory eight count. He did so during the first fight between Lucian Bute and Librado Andrade as well, going so far as to insist that Andrade should have won by knockout despite Andrade's lengthy refusal to stay in a neutral corner after the knockdown and despite the fact that the actual elapsed time between the knockdown and Bute's return to his feet was nine seconds rather than the thirteen Farhood miscounted in the heat of the moment.

None of this is meant as a knock on Farhood, who is the best color commentator or analyst in tv boxing right now. It's just meant to help anyone wondering "why" after hearing Farhood ask the question on the air and to help the tv boxing fan when a commentator less capable than Farhood makes a worse mistake.