Panel: What’s your view on the Board’s support for controversial judge Terry O’Connor

Terry O'Connor

Mickey Helliet
Manager and promoter
I’ve yet to speak to a single person that didn’t think the writing was on the wall for him. A judge’s eyes should surely be on the fight he’s judging 100 per cent of the time. Adding to that how he scored the fight, which most observers were baffled by, I don’t think this did boxing any favours.

Paul Smith
Former world title challenger

The Board will always support their officials. I’d love to see a panel that they use made up of ex pros, current pros, boxing journalists and pundits to create an average score that they can compare cards with. It is opinion, I accept that, but some cards are shocking and need to be justified.

Chris McKenna
Sports reporter

The lack of transparency is a worry. It is good they summoned O’Connor to a hearing but simply saying they accepted it was his opinion is not good enough. That is a cop out. If that’s his opinion of the bout then we need better officials because his opinion is way off and that is not good enough.

Dave Coldwell
Top trainer

Everybody in every field is held accountable and if you’re getting things that are raising questions so many times then surely there’s got to be a case of, as well as getting promoted to top levels, then you could be demoted. There’s got to be some sort of performance accountability in every field.

Listen to the podcast that puts these points to British Board of Control and gets the Board’s in depth response here

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