The Cintron Affair, Or, Does Anyone Know The Rules Around Here?

AUTHOR: | IN: Boxing | COMMENTS: 4 Comments |

BOXING: WILLIAMS VS CINTRON MAY 8

“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.” Alice In Wonderland

One of the interesting byprodcuts of the “Cintron Affair” last Saturday is seeing how clueless many people are about boxing rules and regulations. For the rabid forum barkers, this is a prerequisite for being a “fan.” Too often, however, analysts, participants, and self-appointed experts are also in the dark. You can still hear broadcast commentators say, when two fighters trade knockdowns during a round, “I scored that round 9-8!” as if no one has figured out yet that the fighter tabbed the winner in any given round is automatically given a score of 10 unless a point has been deducted for a foul. A baseball announcer knows how many balls it takes for a walk and how many runs are scored when a grand slam is hit. But boxing? Forget about it. And this despite the fact that boxing has fewer rules than any other major American sport.

On the international broadcast for Williams-Cintron, for example, Bob Sheridan said Cintron had 10 seconds to get back into the ring. Wrong. His broadcast partner corrected him and said Cintron had 20 seconds to get back in the ring. Wrong. ( This is an ABC rule for when a fighter is knocked out of the ring by a blow: “A boxer shall receive a twenty (20) second count if the boxer is knocked out of the ring and onto the floor.”)

A glance at the California State Athletic Commission regulations shines a little light on some of the issues that have been bandied about over the last few days.

*****

Many observers have assailed the California State Athletic Commission for scoring the abbreviated fourth round despite the fact that the ABC unified rules are the same: “Partial or incomplete rounds will be scored. If no action has occurred, the round should be scored as an even round. This is at the discretion of the judges.” This rule is for bouts that go past four rounds, but the spirit of the law is the same as that of the CSAC. If a fight ends 10 seconds into the fifth round, under the ABC regulations, the round is scored.

*****

The CSAC cannot just arbitrarily assign ABC rules to fights. Since the Williams-Cintron bout was not for any belt or trinket, it fell under CSAC jurisdiction. Who knew that the WBO actually had some value? According to CSAC regulations, all involved in the Williams-Cintron fight knew in advance that the fight would not be under ABC rules because, “No club may schedule or advertise a 12-round contest or a 15-round championship boxing contest without written approval of the commission.” It seems inexplicable that HBO would announce that the fight was taking place under the ABC unified rules when it was actually under the auspices of the California State Athletic Commission.

*****

The CSAC regulations concerning a boxer falling out of the ring are both clear and hazy: “A contestant who has been wrestled, pushed, or has fallen through the ropes during a contest may be helped back by anyone and the referee shall allow a reasonable time for the return.” But even referee Lou Moret seemed confused since he is clearly heard asking the timekeeper: “You’re not counting?” A count up to “four” was audible on the HBO telecast. A fighter should only be counted over when he is felled by a legal blow. You have to love these referees who start counting when someone is dropped by a shot to the scrotum or a blow to the occipital bone. Then again, 60 years ago, when boxing was less merciful than it is today–at least inside the ring–the New York State Athletic Commission rules, at the time considered the standard, read: “If a contestant who has been knocked or has fallen out of the ring during a contest fails to be on his feet in the ring before the expiration of 10 seconds, the referee shall count his out as if he were down.”

*****

Dan Goosen may have seemed to lack empathy (he is a promoter, after all) when he said that the bout should have been ruled a TKO for Williams when Cintron could no longer continue, but, ultimately, he is right. Harsh, true, but boxing is an unforgiving vocation in almost every way for those between the ropes. A fighter who cannot continue for any reason in a bout is more often than not deemed a loser by abandonment. Mitigating factors may come into play now and again, like the time the Bernard Hopkins-Robert Allen fight was ruled a no-contest because it was the referee, Mills Lane, who knocked him out of the ring. On the other hand, Adolpho Washington lost a technical decision to Virgil Hill after he was cut by a television camera that was too close to the action. Of course, that fight ended in the 11th round, so the issue of a “legitimate” fight is moot.

*****

One interesting aspect here is that these regulations cover “intentional fouls” or “unintentional fouls.” Chance, misfortune, and the whims of fate—boxing staples–are not mentioned at all in either the CSAC or the ABC regulations. They do, however, make clear the procedure for an abbreviated fight. “If the referee and/or the ringside physician determine that the bout may not continue because of an injury suffered as the result of an unintentional foul or because of an injury inflicted by an unintentional foul which later becomes aggravated by fair blows, the bout must be declared a draw if the bout is stopped before the bell rings to begin the fourth round. After the bell rings to begin the fourth round, the outcome shall be determined by scoring the completed rounds and the round during which the referee or ringside physician stopped the bout.”

*****

No one knows what happened on the floor when Cintron was placed in a half-nelson by the ringside physician. What matters is that the doctor stopped the fight–for whatever reason–and once that happened the CSAC regulations went into effect, for better or worse. Unfortunately, the one round variance between the ABC rules and the CSAC rules to determine a “no-contest” or a technical draw was the difference in the official outcome. Obviously, the devious and calculating Cintron, who is, by the way, still working on perfecting an evil “death-ray” machine in his basement, chose the wrong time to plummet headfirst into a ringside table and out onto the floor in order to win or “escape” a fight in which no one knew what the hell would happen once his nefarious plan had been partially executed.

*****

Read about how the Florida State Athletic Commission gave the finger to safety last year when it approved a bout between Hector Camacho and Yori Boy Campas: The Mickey Mouse Club.

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saintdrummer

Hey Carlos,

What I don't understand is why the sport of boxing has multiple governing bodies regulating the "rules" of a bout. I realize that each state may have it's own own athletic commission or the fight itself may be brought to it's viewers by different networks via HBO ABC etc. The reason for one to have jurisdiction over the other and vise versa seems more suited for a hollywood blockbuster where the local authorities who caught the criminal battles with the FBI over who gets to investigate the case.

Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but shouldn't boxing have one governing body, both nationally and internationally, to set forth the rules of it's own sport so there's no confusion among it's patrons when either an ordinary or extraordinary situation arises?

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Carlos Acevedo

Hi Saintdrummer,

Boxing is the wild west of sports. It's nearly anarchy. For years people have been calling for some sort of national commission or for a federal takeover, but most of the powers in boxing do not want to have restrictions on their corrupt practices and the government will never want to get involved in regulating a blood sport. Reform in boxing is no closer now than it was 50 years ago and one of the reasons things will never change is the cheerleading coverage provided by a boxing "media" that is the least intellectual, ethical, and committed of any sport in America. Boxing's sordid underground ambience--along with its open city policy--allows many unsavory and unqualified folks permanent VIP passes and that's the way they want it.

When I was training in a boxing gym about 12 years ago, I was offered $1,500 to fight overseas as a late substitute. And I was just in the gym trying to lose weight! Without an amateur fight, without ever having a sparring session, I was offered a fight...I agreed, but, thankfully, I was not a light heavyweight, even in those days. I was about 25 pounds over the limit, so they said forget it. The point is that boxing is a sport where anything can happen and that's part of its appeal to some.

Commissions exist to regulate boxing matches because there is no national commission and no boxing "league." So, in order to make sure there are no unregulated boxing contests, state commissions were formed. There will never be one national governing body, like the NFL or the NBA, because the unethical elements wouldn't want that. In any case, boxing is not a big enough sport in America, despite what the "boxing is on a comeback" crew says, to earn the financial backing from an entity to form a league. Such a league would require a huge investment without the promise of remuneration since only three or four events a year are big money makers.

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willfrank

Good stuff Carlos. Nice to see someone actually take the time to try to answer definitively answer some of the questions swirling around out there, instead of just spouting their take.

As always, though, to answer questions like this definitively, you need two things; (1) agreement on WHICH set of RULES applies (boxing may have the fewest rules of any sport, but by far it has the MOST competing sets of rules from which to choose from-- hence the confusion), and once you agree on that you also need (2) to pick which of those pedantic and ponderously written rules apply to govern the particular fact situation at hand (and which, more often than not may NOT cover the situation at hand, or even worse, may contain provisions which contradict each other.

So I draw a couple of conclusions thanks to your legwork, and still have a few open questions (sadly, I got no answers): As to the first part of the analysis CA, not quite sure how the "12 round written approval" Cali reg answers the "which sets of rules" apply question? Recall all the ink spilled (or is it now metadata?) over the Pac/PBF drug test debate which Nevada rules didn't otherwise require If the parties contract for one thing, does that govern or trump? Why is a drug test different than the "scorecard" rule? Can the state rules be "trumped" ONLY when a trinket is on the line? As you note, how this question gets answered ultimately appears to be outcome determinative.

As to the second part of the analysis, CA, I'm a little confused/seek some further clarification--even assuming arguendo the Cali rules appropriately apply. Getting inadvertantly tripped up and having your momentum carry you out of the ring falls under the rubric of "unintentional foul" I gather. And so the ref should have allowed a "reasonable time" to recover (is an injury arising from "falling from the ring" somehow deemed less egregious than say, the 5 minutes allowed for an unintentional low blow? And that also begs the question as to what is the proper role of the doctor during this period--- assuming its not application of various submission holds?). From this I gather that, if unable to continue after such reasonable time, the fight goes to the scorecards if the 4th round has commenced (or the 5th round under the Unified rules). I'm with you so far.

But--after you have made sense of all that CA--- how is Goosen possibly right with his bogus "it should have been a TKO" take? That conclusion seems as "loosey goosey" with the rules as the undefined "mitigating factors" resulting in the BHop non-decision you cite CA. Perhaps the only conclusion to draw is the rules, once everyone agrees which set govern, apply--- except when they dont. Sort of the like Bowie Kuhn's old "best interests of baseball" rule of thumb.

The inadvertant mistakes made the night of Bradley/Campbell last summer were corrected, although no rematch ever was made. I think a case can be made that a similar conclusion should be reached here both under the rules (or more accurately how they were not properly applied) and with a "in the best interest of the sport" appeal . What happened last Saturday night was a semi fiasco of chaos and cluelessness, the end result an absurdity and anyone who watched it knows it. PWill, to his credit, seems to know it too. Goosen should back off and work to fix it rather than insist that things worked just fine and as intended.

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Carlos Acevedo

Hi WF,

damn, man, you're making me work overtime! I thought I answered your last comment with my latest post! No, seriously, let's see what we can make out of this chaos....

First, let's start with the the Goosen TKO thing. Anytime a fighter cannot continue due to circumstances between the two participants, he is a TKO victim. This happens with shoulder injuries (Pernell Whitaker), foot injuries (Derrick Jefferson, Jameel McCline, etc.), cuts, swollen eyes, etc. The only question here is whether the injury was through a foul. Williams did not foul Cintron at all--intentionally or unintentionally. So that leaves "accidental injury," which is covered only by the ABC: "A case of an accidental injury is when someone or something other than an opponent injures a boxer. The Referee must immediately declare that an Accidental Injury has occurrred. In these cases the Referee will have the clock stopped and attend to the injury. When the Referee declares that an accidental injury has occurrred, the Four (4) Round Rule will be applied." If I had to interpret, I would say this is where the Hopkins-Allen issue comes into play: it was the referee who injured Hopkins, it had nothing to do with his opponent. For Williams-Cintron, it can be argued that Cintron's injury was a direct result of his tussling in the ring with Williams.
Veteran boxing writer Graham Houston says basically the same thing:

Yet Cintron was not injured by an unintentional foul.Under any rules, surely — California or unified — if a fighter injures himself and cannot continue, he loses by TKO.

If a fighter slips and breaks his ankle, or if he misses with a wild punch and dislocates his shoulder and can’t continue, the other man wins by TKO, right? This is how it has been all through boxing history, surely? Am I missing something here?

So, under CSAC regulations, which is what they were fighting under even though HBO announced otherwise (completely inexplicable), since no foul-intention or unintentional- was committed, it should probably be a TKO, since they don't have an "Accidental Injury" section that I could find. It's harsh, tough, and unsatisfying, but that's the way it is. The easiest remedy is a rematch, of course, but Goosen wants bigger fish for Williams and he saw his fighter hurt for the second bout in a row and is probably weighing the risk-reward ratio.

I doubt very much that the result will be overturned, since the main argument seems to be "Well, under the ABC rules...." They weren't fighting under the ABC rules, so it makes the point superfluous. This is an assumption I've read and it is incorrect: that there were two sets of rules that night and only one was chosen. The fight was under CSAC regulations from the get-go. In the Williams-Cintron fight, those were the only rules that applied. Whether they were applied properly is another matter altogether.

My point about the "written permission" thing is that, theoretically, promoters had to tell the CSAC that the fight would go 12 and no sanctioning body/title would be involved. That done, then the CASC would say, "OK. We approve 12 rounds. And since no title is at stake it will be under CSAC rules." That means the rules were agreed to beforehand. Contractual agreements between boxers (re: drugs, weight penalization, etc.) do not supersede or eliminate the state commission's power to administer. With Nevada, for example, the point is something like this: if you want to work out a drug test deal amongst yourselves, that's fine, but we will still only do what we do. There is no trumping, under these circumstances, of the state.

ABC regulations, from what I understand, are only automatic for title fights in the U.S., as per agreement with the various sanctioning bodies. Otherwise, they are put into play by no-commission states and fights held on Native American non-jurisdiction lands by request (and for a fee). Any member state of the ABC, from what I can tell, can request ABC oversight for a fee, but will probably not do so just for the hell of it. A promoter cannot dictate the terms under which a fight is held in California. Surely, everyone can see the sense in that. The CSAC may be, like many commissions, a dumping ground for political hacks and clogged up by bureaucracy, etc., but it cannot have conditions dictated by promoters. The notion put forward by some that ABC rules are standard for 12-rounders is incorrect. ABC rules are standard, via pre-existing agreement with various sanctioning bodies, for title fights in the U.S. In this case, a non-title twelve-rounder was definitely non-standard.

By the way, according to ABC rules, the five-minute recovery period is ONLY FOR LOW BLOWS. Theoretically, that means Cintron could have had 10 minutes, etc. under ABC rules because of the "Accidental Injury."

Now, for Cintron and the doctor. If the doctor ruled Kermit was unable to continue immediately, then 5 or 10 minutes don't apply, nor should they. I'm not agreeing with the doctor and I don't know what happened when Cintron hit the floor and the doctor put him in a headlock. But if he determined that Cintron was through--right or wrong-- immediately, then the fight is over, five minutes or no five minutes. Many times fighters have protested stoppages, but the stoppage still stands at the discretion of the doctor. We just have to assume the doctor felt Cintron was through and that Cintron's protests were not enough to dispel the danger Cintron was thought to be in by the doctor. Unless you are Frank Santore Jr, once a fight is stopped, it's stopped.

As we all know by now, WF, there's no such thing as "in the best interest of boxing" in boxing....The best thing is for every state to adopt ABC regulations, period, obviously. Why they don't, I don't know. (Although it strikes me that ABC rules might make it harder for some shenanigans to take place in some of the weaker commission states).

For anybody who is reading this: I'm not one of those omniscient boxing observers who has an answer (often not the right one!) for everything, so if there are any mistakes in the above, or misinterpretations, feel free to write in and correct them. I have read both the ABC regulations and the CSAC regulations, but, of course, there is room for error in anybody's interpretation.

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