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Neither Devin Haney nor George Kambosos will have a compatriot keeping score in their upcoming lightweight undisputed title bout, according to promoter Bob Arum.
The Las Vegas-based Haney, the WBC lightweight titlist, is set to take on unified WBA, WBO, and IBF champion George Kambosos June 5 at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, Australia, Kambosos’ home turf.
As is typically the case whenever a fight is made between the on-the-road challenger and the hometown champion, the topic of potential biases in judging crops up in boxing circles. In this case, there is a perception that Kambosos will get the benefit of the doubt if the fight is close and goes the distance.
Top Rank Inc. head Arum, who is promoting the bout in association with Kambosos’ promoter Lou DiBella, batted away those concerns, saying definitively in a recent interview that only “international” judges would be employed to tally rounds.
“That’s (talk of bias) sort of stupid because there’ll be no Australian judges for that fight,” Arum told FightHype.com. “They will all be international. People just talk, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Arum’s comment confirms Haney’s recent confidence that there will be “neutral” judges for the Kambosos fight.
Arum, 90, also dismissed the perception that foreign fighters are unable to come away with decisions on Australian soil. In 2017, at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia, Arum’s then-charge Manny Pacquiao suffered what many perceived to be a bad decision when he lost a decision to hometown hero Jeff Horn.
Arum, however, does not believe that fight was an example of a robbery that others made it out to be, an opinion he voiced at the time as well.
“Pacquiao, I thought, lost that fight,” Arum said. “When I went in the ring after that fight, the Pacquiao people came over to me and [we’re] very concerned, asking, ‘Did we win the fight?’ Despite the commentary on that fight, I had Horn winning that fight by a point.”