It’s been several months since the Joseph Parker vs Junior Fa event. As much as it was an unforgettable night, some controversy was surrounding the event for multiple reasons, mostly surrounding the officials. However today we can shine some light on one fight that was on the card, Panuve Helu vs Nikolas Charalampous.
The decision for this fight was changed from a split decision draw to a Split Decision win for Panuve Helu a few days after the event took place. This particular fight was one of the most exciting fights we were looking forward to…. On paper unfortunately the fight itself led to major controversies in multiple ways.
First of all, we go with Nik Charalampous, with all respect to him because both boxers put up one hell of a fight, it was a heat of the moment and you do what you need to do to get the win in a boxing ring. But Nik Charalampous landed multiple low blows in the 5th and 6th round.
Secondly, NZPBA was the sanctioning body of the event. NZPBA president Kevin Pyne was in charge of this particular fight which showed really how old he was. Kevin is simply too old to ref this fight or any other fight for that manner. He kept walking to the other side of the ring. A referee needs to keep a constant triangle to the boxers and he kept on walking in the blind spot, or behind a boxer where he can not truly see anything. In the 5th round, he finally took a point deduction off Nik but in the 6th round Nik landed probably 6 under the belt punches (not necessarily a low blow but it was under the belt) and Kevin missed them all.
Thirdly I was informed that the person who was supposed to supervise the undercard actually left during the fight to talk to people at a table. There was another supervisor there but he was only supposed to be doing the main fight of the card, but still, that supervisor wasn’t doing their job. When it came to decision time, the supervisor who wasn’t supposed to be the fight supervisor kept writing the wrong scores onto the MC announcement card. The MC had to keep handing the card back to the supervisor because he knew that it was clearly wrong.
Finally, I was told that two out of the three judges did not hear or see the point deducted for Nik, due to this it was not deducted on their scorecards. The judge who heard and saw the point deducted did mark a point deduction on his card but failed to put it in the final tally on his scorecard.
So obviously this was a bit of crap hitting the fan, which led to the announcement of the fight ending in a draw. Following the fight, the boxing community were furious at this, especially when Doug Viney put the scorecards onto Facebook. The decision got changed on Boxrec but people believed the decision had not officially changed.
As of Wednesday following the event in February, the official results were sent in from the NZPBA office stating that Panuve Helu did indeed win by Split Decision win. Now that this is cleared up, a lot of questions were asked. Should Kevin Pyne (who as I said is NZPBA President) be allowed to referee again? Will the officials including the supervisors get spoken to regarding this incident as all the officials involved in this particular fight screwed up? Should NZPBA move to a round by round system where the judges only do one round at a time instead of doing their own tallying themselves? Because that would have solved this problem. Remember last time a tally issue happened was Nailini Helu vs Ange Davis with judge Maka Vaea tallying up wrong. We have never seen that boxer again.
The problem is that not only did the Panuve camp need to fix this problem by putting in an official appeal which they probably had to pay for but also it cost people money including TAB who paid out all the bets for a draw and for Panuve to win which would have cost them thousands of dollars. It made NZPBA look bad and has put both camps in a difficult position and given a headache to Duco who did not need it.
But all in all, we would like to congratulate Panuve Helu who has got one of the biggest wins of his career by defeating Nik Charalampous. I do agree with Nik Charalampous that they should have a rematch and it should be a 10 round fight for a New Zealand title.
