No Adelaide Byrd this time around, thankfully.
The Nevada Athletic Commission has appointed the referee and three ringside judges for next month’s rematch between unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) and Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs).
Only one of the three judges who worked their first fight, a controversial split draw last September, is set to score the rematch. Dave Moretti had it 115-113 Golovkin, but neither Don Trella (114-114) nor Adelaide Byrd (118-110 Canelo) will be part of the second matchup. These two slots have been filled by highly regarded New Jersey-based Steve Weisfeld, who is often an unofficial scorer on Showtime boxing broadcasts, and Connecticut-based Glenn Feldman.
As for the referee, Kenny Bayless was unavailable to once again be the third man in the ring, so that assignment belongs to New York/New Jersey-based Benjy Esteves, who’ll be reffing both men for the first time in his career.
It wasn’t an entirely smooth-sailing selection process, of course. When the commission replaced Bayless with Tony Weeks, Golovkin’s camp objected, citing a recent fight involving Denis Shafikov, whom Golovkin’s coach Abel Sanchez also trains.
“Tony was giving the prefight instructions in the dressing room, and Abel was trying to clarify something,” [Golovkin’s promoter] Tom Loeffler told ESPN following the commission meeting. “The gist of it was Abel didn’t agree with some of the instructions Tony was giving, so he didn’t feel comfortable with Tony in this fight. When Abel voiced that to me last night, I told Eric, and I made it clear to the commission that we have nothing against Weeks. If they want to assign him to a different fight on the show, no problem. It was just the [main event] Abel had a problem with.”
Unrelated to that matter, Weeks was also the referee for the controversial ending to Andre Ward’s TKO of Sergey Kovalev, in which the finishing blows appeared to stray low. He won’t be shutout of the card entirely, as he’ll ref the co-main event between WBO junior middleweight champ Jaime Munguia and Brandon Cook.
Also of note, Golovkin’s team had no problem with Robert Byrd reffing the bout, but the commission nixed that idea because Byrd is the husband of Adalaide Byrd, and didn’t want any controversy stemming from that choice.
Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin airs live on HBO pay-per-view on Saturday, September 15th at a special start time of 8 PM ET/5 PM PT.