January 5, 2005
TOKYO, JAPAN-Canadian judge William Boodhoo has been very severely criticized here in Japan for having tallied 120-109 for Jose Navarro in the WBC 115-pound title bout held on Monday in Tokyo, Japan. Katsushige Kawashima kept his WBC belt by a split verdict due to the other judges Gelasio Perez of Mexico and Noparat Sricharoen of Thailand having scored 115-114 and 115-113 respectively in favor of the defending champ. It was really a hard-fought close affair to all eyes of the spectators and TV watchers but those of Boodhoo. Even Navarro’s party admitted it was a close battle even though they claimed his victory. We truly wonder why Boodhoo scored such a prejudiced tally as he ignored Kawashima’s effective shots and only evaluated Navarro’s skills to such a great extent. Yoko Gushiken, ex-world 108-pound champ who defended his title 13 times, openly questioned Boodhoo’s qualification as a judge in his column of the Daily Sports, as many experts and press people strongly criticized his biased view. Hideyuki Ohashi, ex-WBC 105-pound champ and the manager of Kawashima, was in hot water, and has promptly shipped a videotape of the total war to the WBC to protest against Boodhoo’s tally. Why didn’t Boodhoo give even a round to Kawashima? Probably he scored on the different scoring standard than the professional boxing standard. It wasn’t an amateur contest but a professional bout with the world title at stake. In the long history of Japan that celebrated some 400 world title bouts there has been definitely no judge that produced such a big and hot controversy among our journalisms as Boodhoo.
(1-5-05)