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Giampa’s take: A perfect stoppage

Fighters Network
08
Nov

Former Nevada boxing judge Chuck Giampa, now a consultant who advises fighters, will provide his occasional analysis of officials and scorecards when he's not directly involved in an event.

Referee Russell Mora handled the stoppage of the opening bout of the Juan Manuel Lopez-Rafael Marquez card perfectly Saturday at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

McWilliams Arroyo (5-1, 4 knockouts) and Cesar Grajeda (7-2, 1 KO) engaged in an action-packed opening round in scheduled six-round flyweight bout, during which Grajeda was knocked down and later lost his mouthpiece. Mora called time, sent Arroyo to a neutral corner and brought Grajeda to his corner to replace his mouthpiece.

Then, just as the 10-second warning sounded to signal the round was about to end, Arroyo knocked down Grajeda again with a left hook. Grajeda was up at the count of eight but Mora expertly examined the fighter’s condition and stopped the fight. Arroyo won on a TKO at 2:59 Round 1.



I asked Mora to explain his thought process before stopping the fight.

“There were several reasons for my decision to stop the fight,” he said. “I did hear the 10-second warning but it had no effect in my decision. First, Grajeda intentionally put his head down causing a minor clash of heads. Second, Grajeda put his head down again at the first knockdown then complained that Arroyo hit him in the back of the head. Third, Grajeda lost his mouthpiece from an effective punch.

“Then during the second knock down, I noticed that, although he was up at the eight count, his mouthpiece was hanging out of his mouth. When I asked him if he wanted to continue, he just mumbled his response to me. His body language indicated to me that he was hurt. Taking all of this into consideration, I made the decision to stop the fight.”

I couldn’t agree more with Mora’s decision. This is the perfect round to show on video at refereeing seminars along with an explanation of Mora’s thought process in stopping the fight with less than 10 seconds left in the round. If more referees would use the same logic, there would be fewer injuries to the fighters.

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