On Thursday afternoon, Robert Smith, the General secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, spoke with The Ring about the outcry from last weekend’s highly controversial undisputed junior welterweight title fight between champion Josh Taylor and challenger Jack Catterall.

The vast majority of fans and media felt that the title should have changed hands at The Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. Catterall controlled the early rounds, and while the Scotsman was more effective in the second half, he was dropped for the first time in his career, and his corner told him he needed a stoppage entering the final round.

The following is a Q&A with Mr. Smith that was conducted by our own Anson Wainwright:

The Ring: The eyes of the world were on Josh Taylor versus Jack Catterall. It was a good fight, but that’s not what everybody is talking about?

Robert Smith: No, unfortunately not. It’s where we are. [I’m] disappointed in that. The fight didn’t light up like you thought it was going to. It was quite a scrappy fight. Josh did the forcing; Jack boxed very, very well – better than anybody thought, I think. I thought it was closer than a lot of people are saying. We’re dealing with that as soon as we possibly can. I’m quite surprised at the varying points of view of how wide people had it for Jack because I had it a couple of rounds.

The Ring: You had Catterall winning?

RS: “I had Catterall winning by two rounds and I’ve looked at it since and haven’t changed my mind. I’ll be watching it again this afternoon with the sound down and will take it from there. [I’m] disappointed with such a varying view of how the fight went. I’m disappointed for Jack and Josh because the fight’s been forgotten about.”

The Ring: You have said there will be a review. Can you explain what the process is?

RS: “We have all the reports before the meeting. All the stewards will get a copy of the official’s reports. They’ve all seen the fight and been encouraged to see it again. We may watch it again. Ian [John-Lewis 114-111 Taylor] will be here to explain how he scored the fight. I’m quite satisfied, because I thought it was close, how Howard [Foster 113-112 Catterall] and Victor [Loughlin 113-112 Catterall] scored it, one round either way. I think it was a lot closer than how people are making out, but I respect other people’s opinions. I have watched it on TV with the sound on and don’t agree with a lot of what was said. I’ll be watching it with the sound off shortly. I’ve watched it twice, one with the sound off and with the sound on.”

The Ring: Did you see it different with the commentary on and off?

RS: “I saw it different with the sound off, but I thought close either way. On the night, I thought Jack nicked it by a couple of rounds and couldn’t argue with Howard and Victor. That’s where my surprise is, that a lot of people had it wide for Jack. I didn’t see that.”

The Ring: I’m told everyone at ringside thought Catterall won. Sky [Sports] were quite damning of the fight. The U.K. co-promoter Ben Shalom came out and said it was, ’embarrassing.’ Carl Frampton, who knows Taylor well, scored it for Catterall. Tyson Fury has come out and said he wouldn’t have any British officials for his upcoming fight with Dillian Whyte. Have all these things put pressure on you?

RS: “Absolutely, it always puts the pressure on when people make comments like that. I fully understand, but then going the other way, Andre Ward had it for Taylor – maybe looking at the fight differently.”

The Ring: But Andre wasn’t ringside.

RS: “A lot of people with complaints were watching on TV. I fully respect what they’re saying, and I had Catterall winning, so I agree with them. I’ve got to deal with what we’ve got to deal with now.”

The Ring: What is that?

RS: “I’ve already put it out. We’ll deal with it. I’ll get all the reports, we’ve got the hearing next week, and after that we’ll put out what my bosses decide.”

Photo by Lawrence Lustig

The Ring: The board has always had a strong reputation, but recently we’ve seen incidents with referees and judges, often the same old faces, making big mistakes. Is this a concern?

RS: “We’re restricted in this country because we have a tier system. When you start as a referee, you’re a trainee. You do schoolwork, do practical, move up to ‘B’ class if you’re good enough. If you’re good enough you move up to ‘A’ clas and then move up to ‘star-class’. That can take you 15-20 years to move up to star class.”

The Ring: How many star class officials are there?

RS: “Eleven, and they’re all affiliated to different organizations. John Latham, Mark Lyson, Victor Loughlin and Ian John-Lewis are WBC. That’s the only organization they can work for. All the others are affiliated with the WBA, WBO and IBF, they can work for all of them. If we’re getting these fights, they tend to get the same rotation but, on the whole, we do two and two, we have a British referee and judge and two foreigners, and the foreigners work with one official of the opponent and one neutral official country. When we have two British boxers boxing each other we try to get British officials, that’s why we had all-British officials the other day. There was a combination of the WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF. Marcus was working because he’s WBA, WBO, IBF; Ian and Victor the WBC; and Howard is the WBA, WBO and IBF, but you tend to get the same pool because we’re always doing those type of championships. Whether we have to look at the makeup of our structure, I don’t know, but it’s something we can discuss at a later date. That’s how we work at the moment, but on the whole, we always have foreign officials here as judges, sometimes as referees. We take every fight as it goes.”

The Ring: Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but do you think neutral officials would have been better?

RS: “We’re British, we appoint British officials. I’ve got no problem with those officials at all. There were three Englishman working that show and one Scottish.”

The Ring: Do you pick them?

RS: “For a championship fight like that, I will work with the sanctioning bodies. I will put forward people and they put forward people and that’s how we agree the officials – a combination of everybody.”

The Ring: Do you then put them forward to the two teams, in this instance Taylor and Catterall?

RS: “Sometimes we may have a request but the boxers do not pick the officials.”

The Ring: Could the boxers team object to an official?

RS: “We have many times where people object to so and so for this reason. That’ll be considered. I’m not one to change officials. I have been in situations where I can see why they’ve wanted the change and I’ve done it on a couple of officials, but very rare.”

The Ring: Looking at other fights, what about the Zelfa Barrett-Kiko Martinez fight? That was a fight most believed Martinez won, but the scorecards of two of the officials were heavily in Barrett’s favor. Bob Williams and Steve Gray both had it 118-111.

RS: “All I saw that night was Barrett boxing very well and Kiko walking in a straight line. We all view things differently. I thought Barrett won, maybe not as wide as what it was. But then again, these judges are sitting at ringside doing one job. Everybody else is sitting there chatting to somebody, the commentators are doing a job, media are doing a job, me sitting there talking to other people. These officials are there to do one job. People will say, ‘He says it all the time,’ but how many fights do we have and how many issues do we have?”

The Ring: It seems to be worse now.

RS: “No, I think it’s worse now because of who comments about things all the time. Suddenly, during the course of a contest, social media is flying all over the place and people take that on board. I love social media, but I’m a fan of people doing their job properly and if people aren’t happy, we’ll deal with it. But during the course of the bout, let the fight happen.”

The Ring: We’ve also had Lewis-Ritson-Miguel Vazquez, John Ryder-Danny Jacobs ruled in the British fighter’s favor. Recently, Lee McGregor received a controversial draw [many people felt he won] in 10-rounder that was only scored by the referee. Is that something to move on from?

RS – “We’ve got 44 shows in March. I can’t give you enough officials for three judges and a referee for 44 shows. On the Ryder fight, I thought Ryder won that fight. I thought Jacobs stopped working in the middle, started going southpaw, and looked a bit lost. I thought Ryder’s endeavour won him the fight. I thought Vazquez won [against Ritson] and I made that known at the time. But that’s just my opinion. The thing that’s being thrown around is that it’s not honest. I deal with these [officials] all the time and I trust them. As long as they give an honest decision, I’m happy with that.”

The Ring: I like to believe it’s not dishonest; more human error or incompetence.

RS: “But do you know more than those three people last week?”

The Ring: Not necessarily me, but 90-percent of the people who watched the fight believe Catterall won.

RS: “I fully agree. I’m not defending the decision. I won’t defend the decision because it is what it is. But are we as qualified, am I as qualified as those judges to judge a fight? I don’t think so. I just have an opinion on how I felt the fight. You know as well as I do, you walk away and you felt somebody won it, but when you go back and watch it, it’s a different fight.”

Photo by Lawrence Lustig

The Ring: Will there be changes to the system?

RS: “We’re always looking to change things but we’re in a different world now than we were 10 years ago. I’ve been general secretary for 11 years now. The sport is flying, I’m very happy to be doing the job I’m doing. I’m very happy with what we’ve achieved. You always need to move on. We move on all the time. We’re not just dealing with judges; we’re dealing with medical aspects, legal aspects. To be fair, we seem to be doing a good job, but every now and again people don’t agree with you.”

The Ring: In terms of moving the sport forward, it doesn’t just fall on the board. There are sanctioning bodies and different countries etc. But when you look at it, could Taylor-Catterall be declared a no-contest?

RS: “No, because a decision has been made, no rules were broken. All the instances I’ve dealt with recently, the [Hamzah] Sheeraz fight, no rule was broken. When the towel was thrown out [by Steve Gray in the Lewis Ritson-Jeremias Ponce fight], no rules were broken. If rules were broken, you could maybe look at it that way. The three judges made the decision, the vast majority of people didn’t like it and didn’t agree and I respect that. I now I have to deal with the rest of it.”

The Ring: Do you believe the 10-9 scoring of rounds could be looked at? Take for example Taylor-Catterall, I think it was the fifth round where Catterall cut Taylor’s eye and won the round big. In another round, Taylor just edges it and the round will still be 10-9.

RS: “You’re talking about something that has been discussed for years. The rounds Catterall won, I thought he won clearly. The rounds I thought Taylor won, I thought he just nicked them, so it makes a big difference to the way you look at a fight. We’ve spoken to sanctioning bodies and other commissions about changing to 10-8 if you win a round clearly and 10-9 if you win close. Trying to get the whole world to work like that is going to be very, very difficult. That’s something I’ve been pushing for a long time. It doesn’t make sense for the British Boxing Board of Control to do that, then I get two foreign officials who don’t work like that. It’s got be a universal thing and that’s something commissions, like us, and sanctioning bodies have to deal with. It has been discussed on numerous occasions, certainly by this board. It’s trying to get the thing moved forward, that’s the most difficult thing.”

The Ring: With regards to the officials, what is the process they go through and what training do they get?

RS: “If you’re deemed suitable at an interview, you’ll start doing scoring tests, then you’ll be interviewed again. You move up to practical, B-class, A-class, star-class. In the meantime, we have official seminars. Star-class referees attend seminars for their relevant sanctioning bodies, and every year there’s a convention and workshops. It’s not as though you just become a referee and don’t do anything. You become a referee and there’s obligations you have to keep to be a referee. In this country you can’t just be a referee, you have to be a judge as well. In other countries you can just apply to be a judge. I personally believe you should be a referee to judge a bout. A lot of people might disagree with me. You certainly would get more people applying to just be a judge because of the responsibility the referee has. I think the system is right. I think it’s highlighted when things go wrong, quite rightly. We have had a couple of years where it seems things have been picked up on. The two things I can really remember is Sheeraz and the towel, and that was within the rules. Whether we like the rules or not, that was within the rules. On Saturday, it was a matter of opinion, whether we like that opinion is a matter of opinion. I’ve had a lot of people contact me saying that they thought it was close and Taylor might have got it through his work rate, but unfortunately a lot of people don’t want to put that out there because they get destroyed.”

The Ring: Is there an instance when you call in the official and take them out of play for a period of time?

RS: “Yeah, you could do that. The worst thing for that individual is you could withdraw their license. If it’s been a regular occurrence, you can withdraw their licence, you can downgrade them, you can put them aside for a couple of months. We’ve just had a referee committee meeting last week where we considered the upgrading of referees and a number of referees have been upgraded to the next stage. That recommendation is from the committee and will go before the board next week for them to approve or not approve it. So, younger people are coming into the sport. It’s just the referees you’re seeing in major championships are in a category where we can only use them. Depending on the fight, I’ve got to decide the best makeup of the officials. If there’s a European title fight, we have an agreement with the EBU where we have one neutral because our officials can go abroad and work quite easily. In America, it’s very rare our officials can referee. Nevada very rarely have any officials from outside Nevada for any world title fight. In California it’s slightly more relaxed, but you’ll find the vast majority of judges in California, New York and New Jersey look after themselves. There is no boxing board of control, each state looks after itself.”

The Ring: Do you think we need to make changes?

RS: “I don’t know what those changes would be. Do we go to five judges, seven judges, nine judges? I don’t know what those changes are, other than taking a completely different format, and I don’t know what that format would be.”

The Ring: It feels like something should be done. We’ve seen instances in soccer with VAR, Rugby with the video referee, other sports, but we don’t change things in boxing.

RS: “I was listening to [talk about] VAR in soccer and people are saying to get rid of it. If you’ve got some ideas how it changes, let me know.”

The Ring: So, you’re happy to look at change, but it needs to be uniform and not just the board?

RS: “If we could come up with a better way of doing it, I’d be extremely happy to try it out. But I don’t know a better way at the present time. If somebody does, please come and let me know.”

The Ring: In closing, is there anything you’d like to add?

RS: “I think boxing in this country is doing very well. We obviously have hiccups but we’ve got more shows going on than ever before. We’ve got more people applying for licenses. The sport is in a boom period, and possibly one of the reasons we’re getting so many opinions is because it is a boom period – more people watching it, involved in it, which is fantastic. I’m very happy to listen to people’s opinions. I might not always agree with them, and I’m sure from social media notices this week, not many people agree with me. But you’ve got to respect that, I fully understand that, and I’ll get on with the job to the best of my ability.”

Questions and/or comments can be sent to Anson at [email protected] and you can follow him on Twitter @AnsonWainwright

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