Let me first say that I did not get to watch Paul Malignaggi’s fight with Juan Diaz over the weekend. If I had, I would have seen what was apparently a pretty close fight. Well, a pretty close fight in the eyes of everyone except Gale Van Hoy, one of the judges sitting ringside. Hoy had the fight 118-110 in favor of Diaz, while the other two judges had the Malignaggi losing the fight by much closer margins of 115-113 and 116-112. Hoy had it 10 rounds to 2 and Paulie, as relayed by Deadspin, has an idea why:
“I’ve been watching boxing a long time and you don’t see too many good decisions in Texas with out of towners against Texas fighters. I don’t know who to blame. I put my two cents in before. I didn’t want Gale Van Hoy and I didn’t want Raul Caiz.
118-110 was Gale Van Hoy d*cking it to me. He bent me over and he f*cked me. I said before the fight that this guy never goes against a Texas fighter in the state of Texas. I complained about him and he did it to me on purpose. There is no way that anybody won that fight 118-110. I didn’t beat Juan 118-110 and Juan didn’t beat me 118-110. Gale Van Hoy filled out his score card and said ‘let me f**k Paulie Malignaggi because he talked s**t.”
Malignaggi went on to say that this is why boxing has no popularity left. It’s actually a similar reason why I got turned off of boxing about three years ago. I went to a small-level card in central California (Arreola and Paul Williams were on it) and watched every decision go in favor of the fighters for the guys promoting the card. It’s hard to watch something where judges are paid off or holding personally biases. We see it all the time. I’m guessing Paulie was on the mark. The only difference is it would have been a unanimous decision regardless and he would have been on the losing end no matter what.
