By Rudy Mondragon

Big ups to Steve Kim from Max Boxing who came up with the title of this piece in his recent article, Floyd Foils Robbery Attempt in Las Vegas. Kim’s piece as well as this one are necessary in calling out poor judging in boxing. CJ Ross is the infamous judge who scored the recent Floyd Mayweather vs Saul Alvarez fight 114-114 even. Many saw and scored the fight as a landslide victory for Floyd. Many saw Canelo win 2-3 rounds at most.

So who is CJ Ross? CJ is from Las Vegas, Nevada and scores most fights that take place in her hometown. She has also scored fights in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Many have made the recent connection that in addition to poorly judging the Mayweather/Canelo fight, she also made a bad call in the Timothy Bradley/Manny Pacquiao fight. She, along with D Ford scored in favor of Bradley. If we look at her profile on boxrec, we can also see that she has made other calls that are worth an investigation at minimum.

There was a lot of talk that the best bet in this fight was to put money down on a draw. Was CJ Ross involved in an attempted fixed fight? Were the other two judges in on it too and if so, did they change their mind because Floyd had a one-side victory performance? There was also a theory that Oscar De La Hoya conveniently checked into rehab to avoid questions of a controversial (fixed) win in favor of Saul Alvarez, his cash cow. Of course these are only theories, there is no real truth to them unless people come out and talk about the issue. Whats important are the questions that followed this fight and the answers that need to be shared with the boxing community.

Why did Golden Boy and TMT promotions allow for CJ Ross to be a judge knowing her history of controversial judging? Who had leverage and power in deciding the final 3 judges? After all, this fight was title as THE ONE! Questions Questions Questions!

These questions and accountability are important because of what Steve Kim said in his piece: “if they (Judges) were willing to give Alvarez that much credit for what he actually accomplished on Saturday night, imagine if he had actually won three or four rounds legitimately.”

Accountability in boxing is important because many say boxing is dead. With this kind of judging, it only fuels that narrative of the none believers who indeed believe that boxing is dead. On the flip side, since I believe that boxing is more alive than ever, we need to continue to move in a positive direction. This means making the necessary changes that will continue to uplift the sport. If that means parting ways with some of the elders in the game (judges, promoters, etc), then peace out to them. With that said, as I write this piece, I just received an alert from Bleacher Report, it reads “Boxing Judge CJ Ross takes a self-imposed indefinite leave of absence from working fights” (Twitter, Steve Carp).

With this piece of breaking news, my thoughts are maybe this is a start… Don’t get me wrong, I want CJ Ross to be held accountable. I just hope this is not a move to have CJ Ross lay low while things cool down. If she returns, I hope she returns having reflected on her judging and updated herself on scoring fights. I am sure that CJ Ross is not the only bad judge out there too. There are many male judges out there too that don’t get called out because of the male privilege that exists in boxing. Boxing needs to hold people accountable on all fronts. Very real thing that does not get called out in the boxing world. Yeah, we need to go there boxing fam. Peace.