Crossing The Line
By William Trillo
As I was downing my first cup of coffee Saturday morning I got a call from someone I will identify only as a concerned boxing enthusiast. The caller said, “I do not want to go on the record with this,but on the televised broadcast of last night’s Peter Petrov vs. Michael Perez fight you can hear Perez trainer Robert Garcia in between rounds clearly telling his fighter, (who was getting pummeled by Petrov), to throw a low blow in the next round. There is no mistaking it, he said something like throw a hard one then leaned over and whispered, in the juevos.”
I told the caller that the fact of the matter was I was just thinking about that moment myself, which was 100% fact. From my perspective ringside and right next to the Perez corner I had a great vantage point for what was going on in the ring. Admittedly I did not hear what the camera’s picked up but when that round began Perez landed a blow extremely South of the Border. Moments after the blow landed while the ref had given Petrov time to recuperate Garcia shouted to his fighter something along the lines of, “OK Mikey, that’s enough! No more Mikey!” I glanced over my shoulder and looked at a very concerned Garcia. It seemed to me he had ordered the low blow because his fighter was getting a real beat down and he had no other answers.
As we know, the low blow had little or no effect on Petrov and Garcia would soon be keeping his fighter from answering the bell for the next round.
I told the caller I wasn’t surprised the camera picked up the low blow order from Garcia and it confirmed my suspicions that the foul was premeditated. I finished the call by saying thanks for the information, maybe I will mention it in my Monday morning blog.
A few hours later I got a message on Facebook from someone else in the boxing community who asked, “So how unethical & bad would it be if a trainer sends his fighter to hit the opponent HARD on the balls & it’s heard on national TV?”
I told him that he was not the first person who brought this to my attention and that I knew exactly who and what he was talking about.
He replied, “This shit is serious a HARD BLOW in the balls can end your career…it’s all on tape…disgusting!”
Just to confirm what I had been told because I had not yet watched the replay I reached out to someone on the broadcast team who confirmed what I was being told by saying, “Yes, it was caught on tape.”
Enough said.
As Bernard Hopkins says when asked about opponents and their dirty tricks, “This is the hurt business”, this kind of stuff happens all the time.Let’s not pretend to be naïve here. Low blows, elbows, head butts, rabbit punches are just but a few of the questionable tactics that have been used and will be used again by fighters who feel they have no other way to get back into the fight…it’s just the nature of the beast.
Call it Crossing The Line or Doing What You Gotta Do, it ain’t going away anytime soon…if ever.
Am I condoning the illegal behavior? Heck no.
Do I expect to see it stop anytime soon? Again…heck no.
But in this day and age of high tech microphones in corners, cell phone cameras in everyone hands et al, I would think people in “the biz” would be more discreet when imploring their fighters to use less than The Marques of Queensbury rules.
In this case Karma reached out and bit Perez directly on his ass but that is not always the case, sometimes fighters successfully apply some dirty tricks and turn the fight around and end up becoming victorious in a bout they otherwise would never have won.
So much for calling it “The Sweet Science” or “The Manly Art of Self Defense”.
There is nothing Scientific or Manly about cheating.
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