Junior welterweight Batyr Akhmedov 7-1 (6) is fuming over his decision loss to Mario Barrios 25-0 (16) on the Errol Spence-Shawn Porter undercard in Los Angeles last weekend.
Despite going down in the fourth and 12th rounds, the 28-year-old Russian southpaw appeared to control much of the action with his relentless pressure.
When the dust settled all three judges awarded the fight to Barrios by scores of 115-111, 116-111 and 114-112.
The Akhmedov camp issued a statement the same day that the WBA awarded Barrios their ‘Boxer of the Month’ award.
“I worked my whole life to become a world champion and when the opportunity came, I clearly won the fight,” Akhmedov said.
“I dominated the fight from start to finish, re-watch the tape as I have and see how bad Barrios was hurt in every round.
“After the tenth round, he wanted to quit he was so badly beaten. I don’t even think the judges watched the fight.”
Akhmedov’s manager Vadim Kornilov added: “This is the height of incompetence, these judges needed to be immediately held responsible to the full extent permitted. They stole the world title from Batyr.
“Look at the photos from the fight and after the fight, Barrios did not win that fight and his whole team didn’t even expect to get their hand raised. Barrios is suspended and cannot enter the ring for the next six months, how is he going to defend his championship? He cannot fight for medicals reasons due to injuries suffered in the fight and Batyr could fight next month if the opportunity was given.
“I am very positive that if Batyr lost a fight in a similar fashion, he would have given the belt over to the other guy, or would have been the one to request a rematch as he would not want to be a champion when millions all over the world saw that he did not win this fight and did not deserve the belt. We hope that Barrios being a real warrior that showed a lot of character and survived a very, very tough fight will support the rematch which I am sure the whole world will want to see.
“The rounds were easy to score, you saw who did the damage, and they got a number of critical rounds wrong. There were not that many close rounds and any other professional judge will confirm this, it’s on them now, they have to live with what they did for the rest of their lives. Batyr will just go on towards his dream of becoming a world champion, what they did here is just an obstacle to his goal.
“We will go ahead with filing an appeal with the World Boxing Association and requesting an immediate rematch. Batyr did what we expected he would do since this fight was ordered a year ago by the WBA for the mandatory position. If Batyr was getting beat up as bad as Barrios and had such a significant injury which looked like a cheekbone fracture which can cause damage to the eye socket, the fight would have been stopped.
“Everything was done to help this kid get the victory that he did not deserve. We greatly appreciate all the fans, which unlike the judges, don’t care who the A or B side is and where each fighter is from, the arena knew who won the fight and so did most of the experts all over the world that wrote about this fight on social media, and they unanimously put justice ahead of nationality and other aspects.”
 is fuming over his decision loss to Mario Barrios 25-0 (16) on the Errol Spence-Shawn Porter undercard in Los Angeles last weekend.){kind=link}