The end of a marvelous 1600 punch epic ended in controversy tonight when Michael Brodie's second attempt to arrest the WBC featherweight crown was foiled when such an amazing display by two brave warriors going way beyond the call of duty was ruined by inept refereeing and scoring that once again did not reflect well on the past shadows of Jose Sulaiman's WBC closet.
The bout's opening round started off at an amazing pace but midway through the session there was a clash of heads that went quite unnoticed by many due to the fact that no one was truly to blame and no points seemed to be deducted because of the accidental nature. Brodie was actually the man cut on his forehead yet no protests ensued. The bout swung one way then the other throughout this championship classic.
Brodie was dropped briefly in the second round by a nice combination from the battle hardened Korean. He pushed Chi back in the middle rounds and began to claw his way into a slight lead coming into the 7th round. However, I scored Chi taking the closing stretch to the wire towards round 10 and in my opinion just close the show a 2 point winner in a pocket masterpiece that is possibly the finest world title fight on British shores since Nigel Benn v Gerald McClelland in 1995. This however was not the end of the story.
After both fighters hugged and displayed hopeful celebrations everyone waited, and waited for the scores to be tallied. The proud warriors stood confused for over 12 minutes whilst some confusion at ringside began to smell worse than a rotten piece of meat. Then when the scores seemed to have been totalled and passed to the MC, the ringside supervisor jumped in and demanded a recount. During the melee that looked like something from a gangster film Jose Sulaiman actually started to tally the scores himself by hand and some focus was being made towards the opening round and the way it had been scored when the night's blockbuster was released.
Mike Brodie had astonishingly been deducted a point in round one for the head clash that had seen him come out the injured party. Referee Daniel Van de Wiele clearly did not deduct the point on a rerun of the tape and everyone at ringside was staggered. Had the point not been deducted Brodie may have earned a draw but due to the deduction the tallies ended up 114-112, 113-112 and 113-113 even. After the deduction. Injin Chi was declared the new champion and the winner , but twenty minutes after some bitter scenes and hard discussions, the shady outcome was frozen and an immediate meeting is currently being held as I write this to see if the bout be declared a draw and an immediate rematch be ordered. If the outcome is that Mr. de Wiele had blundered in not making the deduction clear, the bout should be declared a draw. The discussions are ongoing, and the bout's result remain a ?
I will try to post more as the argument is resolved. But certainly the evening's happenings were a disgrace and as the scoring points tallying time was dragging on it did indeed look very dodgy. What a disgraceful end to a marvelous fight. I do think Chi was the deserved winner, but the way it was done was quite distasteful. Injin Chi the new WBC champ (for the time being!)
NEWSFLASH...
The Controversial Injin Chi v Mike Brodie bout was just corrected to a majority Draw by Jose Sulaiman. The WBC Title is now Vacant. The Draw was declared because it was just revealed a ringside judge actually deducted not one but two points from Mike Brodie's scorecard in the amazingly controversial first round... The Result of this championship match ...A DRAW.
The night's events were billed as PROPER FIGHT/PROPER TITLE referring to the belt (WBC) being a highly regarded piece of hardware. But what I did witness was very improper indeed.
10-17-2003
