Aurélien CANOT, Media365, published on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 12:24 p.m.
Unfairly arrested after the end of the ninth round by the referee of his match against Israil Madrimov on December 17 in the WBA super-welterweight semi-final when his opponent had struck him seven blows after the gong, Michel Soro filed a complaint to the world federation. The French boxer asks to compete again in this semi-final.
It was obvious that Michel Soro was not going to stop there. The French boxer, feeling aggrieved and rightly so, after his defeat to Israil Madrimov by the referee’s stop at the end of the ninth round, on December 17 in the WBA super-welterweight semi-final, intends do everything to ensure that this fight is contested again. It is in this sense that he filed a claim with the World Federation (based in Panama), through its New York lawyer David Berlin. In a long letter dated December 21, the representative of Soro asks that its defeat of last December 17 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), on the lands of Madrimov, be transformed into a no contest (no result), so that a new semi-final between the two men takes place. Before the Spanish fight referee Salvador Rodriguez decided to stop him unfairly, the 34-year-old boxer who had lost only twice since the start of his career (for 35 wins, including 24 before the limit, and 1 bad) had indeed received a shower of blows (seven in total) after the gong.
The Hopkins and Edwards examples
Afterwards, the referee had not admitted his fault and used as only defense the fact that he had not heard the bell ringing. In his letter, Me Berlin relies on press articles from around the world denouncing the arbitration error and crying scandal the day after Soro’s defeat. The lawyer also refers to five examples in boxing history that caused an arbitration error to turn results into a no contest, as Soro asks. The latter’s advice thus recalls how Bernard Hopkins, thrown to the ground by another American Chad Dawson on a hold having everything judo but nothing boxing and injured a shoulder on the spot, had recovered his WBC light heavyweight title in 2011. Citing a case even closer to that of Soro (the Englishman was struck in 2019 by the Mexican Julio Cesar Martinez when he had one knee on the ground), Me Berlin also returns in his letter to the claim of Charlie Edwards who had borne fruit and allowed him to keep his belt and face his opponent again. Hopefully Michel Soro will also be successful.
