Missed Knock Out Call in Madrimov-Walker Fight Shows Boxing's Dire Need for Reform

Referee Gary Ritter let Israil Madrimov and Eric Walker keep fighting after what should have been a knock out, a dangerous call that needs to change in boxing.

In 2019, boxing was beset by tragedy. We mourned the loss of Maxim Dadashev, the junior welterweight prospect who succumbed from injuries suffered in a beating that went on too long. We cried over Patrick Day, the happy go lucky junior middleweight whose grueling fight with Charles Conwell ended with a combination he would never wake up from. We prayed when a continent away, Hugo Santillan suffered three heart attacks after his fight, dying in a hospital bed days later.

And we learned nothing.

On Saturday night, on a DAZN-streamed card in Tulsa, Oklahoma, boxing’s incompetence was on full display. In the co-main event, Israil Madrimov, a rising 154-pound contender, faced Eric Walker, a 37-year-old veteran. For eight rounds, it was a competitive fight. In the ninth, Madrimov connected with a thudding left hand, sending Walker crashing to the mat.

Only that’s not how the referee, Gary Ritter, saw it.

Ritter, an Oklahoma-based official, ruled that Madrimov’s body, not the punch, put Walker down. “It was a good punch,” Ritter said to Madrimov in the ring. “But you hit him with the shoulder, and that’s why he went down. If you hadn’t done that, the fight would have been over, and you would have had a knockout.”

Replays quickly showed that Ritter’s ruling was complete nonsense.

Madrimov drops Walker, but the referee rules no knockdown.

Agree? pic.twitter.com/swiyR3xKNa

— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) August 16, 2020

“The call was incorrect,” Steve Smoger, a Hall of Fame referee, told SI.com. “The knockdown was precipitated by a lawful punch. The shoulder did nothing. This happens on many occasions. Sometimes fighters get carried into each other. You have to discern what caused the fighter to go down. In my view, the shoulder played no role.”

The call was bad. What happened after was worse. With Walker crumpled on the canvas, Ritter motioned to him to get up. Walker remained there for almost a minute. “He says he’s dizzy,” Ritter said to a physician, who had climbed into the ring. When Walker got to his feet, he stumbled to the ropes, his body collapsing over them. From there, Walker collapsed again, this time into the corner.

Short of passing out, Walker gave every indication that he was finished.

“It was over,” Smoger said. “There was no recovering. When you are hit like a shot like that, you’re done. When you see someone [lying] like that, you stop the fight.”

The fight continued, and so did the beating, with Madrimov, a 25-year old Uzbek star on the fast track to a world title opportunity, a heavy handed hitter who had knocked out all five of his previous opponents, teeing off. At the end of the 11th round, Ritter said to Walker’s corner, “He’s taking a lot of punishment.” And then Ritter—and Walker’s cornermen—allowed Walker to come out for the 12th and absorb three minutes more.

“I don’t care what caused it or what the reason was,” said Walker’s promoter, Lou DiBella, who because of COVID-19 restrictions was not at the show. “I’m not willing to crucify a referee for an angle he didn’t see. But at that moment, the fight shouldn’t have continued. Go to the scorecards. Don’t take a break if the guy is concussed. It was a very dangerous mistake. The fight should not have gone on from that point.”

Would DiBella, who promoted Day, have stopped the fight?

“I would have gone to his corner and said I think you should throw the towel in,” DiBella said. “Or we would have gone to the commission table and said go to the scorecards. There were a lot of mistakes.”

Remember this, boxing, when the crocodile tears flow following the next in-ring fatality. We are outraged by death; anything less we shrug off. In June, Yenifel Vicente buried a low blow well below the belt line of Jessie Magdaleno. With Magdalenno’s hands down and before referee Robert Byrd could step in, Vicente unleashed a right hand that bounced off Magdaleno’s skull. Magdaleno hit the canvas face first. He lay that way for more than 30 seconds, before rolling over on his back for a few minutes more.

By any definition, Magdaleno had been knocked out.

The fight, however, was allowed to continue.

That both fighters, Magdaleno and Walker, wanted to fight on is both true … and completely irrelevant. How many times have we seen a fight stopped and, minutes later, have the stopped fighter insist he could have continued? Fighters want to fight. Deontay Wilder would have taken a few more rounds of punishment from Tyson Fury had Mark Breland not thrown in the towel. Arturo Gatti would have let Oscar De La Hoya beat on him forever had Hector Rocha not jumped up on the ring apron and Pat Lynch not tossed in the towel.

Fighters aren’t supposed to protect themselves.

Referees are.

“We have to save them from themselves,” said Smoger.

Cornermen are.

On Saturday, both failed, miserably.

Where was the corner of Walker, when their fighter wobbled back on spaghetti legs, two rounds after getting knocked out and with virtually no hope of winning? Where was Ritter, when Walker took a pair of savage hooks a minute in, ending any chance of a last-gasp comeback?

Remember this, all of this, when the next tragedy strikes. Boxing is a dangerous sport. You get clipped with a big shot, you get hurt, that, unfortunately, comes with the territory. But brutal beatings don’t. If a fighter gets hit with an illegal head shot and it takes longer than a 10-count to come to his senses, a fight should be over.

You don’t ask a warrior if he wants to continue.

A warrior always will.

Get angry, boxing, channel the frustration felt after the deaths of Santillan, Dadashev and Day and demand reform. Call for Nevada, where Magdaleno took his knockout punch, to change its rules. Insist that Oklahoma, where Walker escaped from, to do the same.

Care now, when you can do something.

Or don’t act like you do when you can’t.