WBC super featherweight champion Oscar Valdez’s controversial 12 round unanimous decision win over Robinson Conceicao from last Friday has resulted in the Brazilian fighter and his team filing a complaint to the WBC because of what they believe was poor officiating and judging for the contest.
Conceicao’s manager Sergio Batarelli wants the WBC to order Valdez to give an immediate rematch or a #1 ranking so that he can soon challenge for the title.
In addition to Team Conceicao being upset about the officiating and judging, ESPN reports that the Brazilian team is unhappy with Valdez (30-0, 23 KOs) testing positive for the banned substance phentermine last August but STILL being allowed to go ahead with the fight.
The WBC didn’t strip Valdez of his 130-lb title despite phentermine being banned on VADA, which the sanctioning body uses for their Clean Drug Program.
Earlier on Monday, one of the judges, Stephen Blea, that worked the Valdez-Conceicao fight, gave a statement explaining his wide 117-110 score in favor of Oscar, which was a far more lopsided score than the other two judges that had it 115-112, 115-112.
In the statement, Blea admitted that he was distracted by the crowd noise and that he had scored the close rounds for Valdez.
“I feel I have let down my federation,” said Blea.
Conceicao fought well enough to deserve to win the first five rounds before Valdez came on in the second half, winning many of the rounds. He didn’t appear to win all of them, but the judges saw him as getting the better of the action. It didn’t look that way too many of the boxing fans, as a lot of them felt that Conceicao had done more than enough to preserve his win.
Besides the scoring that went to the A-side fighter Valdez, the referee docked a point from Conceicao in round 9 when he lightly tapped Oscar in the back of the head during a clinch.
The referee stepped forward and surprisingly deducted a point from Conceicao, even though he hadn’t warned him for throwing rabbit punches before this. Later in the fight, when Valdez returned the favor with a hard rabbit shot to the back of Conceicao’s head, the referee failed to penalize him.
That looked strange because the referee had treated the situation differently than he’d done earlier with Conceicao, and it should have been treated the same. If the referee wasn’t going to give warnings first to Conceicao before penalizing him, he should have done the same thing with Valdez.
“It’s a joke,” Batarelli said to ESPN. “This guy is not qualified to judge a world title [bout]. Who appointed him? This all is a mess. It’s a joke.
“Why do you need a drug test if the guys can run over when it’s good for them?” he added. “It’s not fair. It’s really not fair. I hope Sulaiman considers my complaint. In Brazil, all the press is talking about this. It’s hard.”
Given all the money that Valdez stands to gain fighting the winner of the October 23rd fight between WBO super featherweight champion Jamel Herring and Shakur Stevenson, it’s unlikely the WBC will order him to fight Conceicao in a rematch.
Top Rank, the promoters for Valdez, wouldn’t be happy with the WBC if they ordered him to give Conceicao a rematch. Valdez took a bad beating from Conceicao as it was, and with a different set of high-quality judges working the rematch, Oscar could lose.
If Valdez gets beaten by Conceicao, he can forget about fighting the winner of the Herring vs. Stevenson fight.