Wednesday, May 12, 2004 | 9:16 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
When Roy Jones Jr. and Antonio Tarver step into the ring Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center, among the many who will study their every move will be three men sitting on elevated stools with several things in common.
Yes, they're the assigned judges and all will be neatly groomed and nicely dressed for the fight but there's more to their similarities than that. Foremost: Each is from Las Vegas.
That's just how it should be anytime there's a high-profile fight in town.
More so than last Saturday at the MGM when some guy named Guy and two other imported judges were called upon to rule on the Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Manny Pacquiao featherweight title fight, Jones vs. Tarver II demands quality scoring. And the only way to assure that is to call upon three experienced, world-class judges who share nuances such as what to look for and what to disregard in a big-time fight.
It's time for Nevada and its athletic commission to quit being so benevolent.
It's time to eliminate the well-intentioned but misguided practice of occasionally bringing in judges from outside the country as well as the county.
It's time for the NSAC to forget about trying to be worldly or trying to appease some distant faction.
It's time to do what it does with its referees, which is use nothing but Las Vegans for the major fights here.
Provincialism?
I'd say it's more a matter of practicality.
The men (and women) who reside here and are utilized by the NSAC as judges are highly trained and undeniably efficient. They not only get regular work due to the number of boxing cards in Las Vegas, they have felt the tension that flows through an arena at a big fight and they are not adverse to handling it.
They are also required to partake in numerous clinics, and they are routinely subjected to postfight discussions among themselves and their supervisors that serve as critiques of their scoring and decision-making processes.
They are not robots but they are swayed to a uniformity. They are taught what to look for and are field-tested on their abilities.
As a group, they're the only judges in the world that elicit even the slightest bit of confidence in a sport that is forever having its confidence shaken.
Jerry Roth, Dave Moretti and Duane Ford will judge Saturday's main event in a move that silently, quietly, takes the first step toward what could be a formal or informal decision to limit the major fights in Las Vegas to Las Vegas judges.
These three men were picked not so much because of what happened in last weekend's fight at the MGM but because of what happened last Nov. 8.
That was the night Jones and Tarver first fought and the NSAC assigned Roth and two non-Las Vegans, Glenn Hamada and Dale Harris, to score the fight. Roth turned in a 114-114 scorecard, while Hamada (a preposterous 117-111 for Jones) and Harris (an almost equally absurd 116-112 for Jones) mistook Tarver for the Invisible Man.
Tarver, predictably, hit the roof and most of the fans wondered how Hamada and Harris could possibly have had Jones that far ahead in a fight that was so closely contested. The scene wasn't necessarily ugly, yet it reflected poorly on Nevada and the NSAC that two of the three men picked to score the fight seemed so wrong about it.
"That's a good thing," Tarver said Tuesday when reminded of the fact he'll have three Las Vegas residents judging his rematch with Jones. He expects to get a fair shake this time, should the fight go its 12-round distance.
Nevada, the NSAC and boxing as a whole need for this fight to be scored without controversy after what happened here last week, too.
Once again the NSAC went outside the city's borders to select judges for the Marquez vs. Pacquiao fight and, arguably, all three of them were lousy. The "token" Nevadan, Reno's Burt Clements, was especially offensive in that he admitted afterward that he didn't know the rules.
But Guy Jutras, of Montreal, and John Stewart, of Atlantic City, turned in questionable cards as well, as Jutras fell in love with Marquez after the first round in giving him the nod by a 115-110 score and Stewart saw Pacquiao as indomitable in supporting him by a 115-110 count.
The majority draw was acceptable in general in that both men fought well, but the divergent scores and Clements' inexcusable admission will forever cloud the postfight discussion.
There is only one solution: Assign only Las Vegas judges to the big fights that are held here. They're trained and they're sharp and they come without baggage, in more ways than one.
They do first-rate jobs and they don't require airline, hotel and per diem expenses.
If Nevada is going to take the heat and criticism for the scores in close fights that are held here -- which it does -- it needs to be sure its best foot is always forward. And that foot is in a shoe being worn by a Las Vegan.
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