Latest news with #referee
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Boxing ref reveals security escorted him to his car after Gallen-Williams bout following threats
Boxing referee Les Fear has complained to Combat Sport NSW over conduct from Sonny Bill Williams ' camp after Wednesday night's bout with Paul Gallen in Homebush. Gallen claimed a narrow win over bitter rival Williams in their long-awaited grudge match, leaving fight fans debating who really won the bout. The Cronulla Sharks icon took the verdict with two judges awarding him the eight-round bout on scores of 77-74 and 76-75, with the third giving Williams the edge, 77-74. Fear, one of Australia's best referees, had security guards walk him to his vehicle after the bout because of the threats he was receiving, reports News Corp. 'I'm furious about it,' Fear said. 'People around the ring could hear the abusive language.' Fear had security guards walk him to his car after the bout because of the threats he was receiving during the night 'And then at the end, I looked down to the Combat Sport Inspector and said, "Get security here right now." I want them out of the ring and out of the venue.' Williams could be seen persistently holding throughout the bout to neutralise the pressure from Gallen. The tactic backfired in the seventh round when referee Fear penalised Williams with a point deduction after repeated warnings. Had that point not been deducted, the 39-year-old would have walked away with a draw. 'I told Sonny Bill and Paul Gallen there would be no holding,' Fear said. 'It's illegal to hold in boxing. I didn't want to be pulling them apart all night because they're a lot bigger than me. 'Sonny Bill blatantly disregarded my instructions. He didn't listen. 'There's rules in rugby league and there's rules in boxing. If you do the wrong thing you get penalised.' Fear went on to say that he was copping abuse from Williams' team throughout the bout. 'Everyone's going me,' he said. 'But at the end of the day he didn't get the decision because he disrespected the rules of boxing. Simple as that. Sonny Bill has got to take responsibility.' Williams' camp was indeed furious with the result, with his manager Khoder Nasser calling the decision 'criminal'. 'Only in Australia. No other [boxing] commission in the world would have a referee like that,' he told Stuff. '...the last judge lives in Cronulla [Gallen's home town]. A judge from Cronulla. Can you believe these authorities? To have a bloke from the same neck of the woods as the other guy. It's criminal.' The result leaves Gallen with a pro boxing record of 15-3-1 with eight wins by knockout, while Williams sits at 9-2, with four wins by KO.
The Independent
a day ago
- Sport
- The Independent
Australia vs Lions referee: Who is first Test official Ben O'Keeffe?
New Zealand's Ben O'Keeffe will take charge of the first Test between Australia and the British and Irish Lions in Brisbane. Born in Blenheim on New Zealand's South Island, O'Keeffe started refereeing at the age of 19 and stepped up into the professional ranks five years later. He was elevated to a first international fixture in 2015 as an assistant, before a refereeing debut in June 2016 overseeing a draw between Samoa and Japan. A regular recipient of the New Zealand referee of the year award, O'Keeffe was selected to take charge of the second Lions test in South Africa in 2021, before making the 12-strong list of referees for the 2023 World Cup. The 36-year-old was appointed to a quarter-final and semi-final at the tournament. O'Keeffe's performance in the last eight was criticised by beaten French captain Antoine Dupont, but the Kiwi responded well and took charge of England's narrow defeat to South Africa in the semi-final at the Stade de France a week later. A qualified ophthalmologist, O'Keeffe's brother Michael represented New Zealand at the London Olympics and is now a sports reporter. He is highly-regarded by World Rugby and can count on strong support at Suncorp Stadium, with the Kiwi assisted by Nika Amashukeli and Andrea Piardi - the referees for the second and third Tests in the series. Compatriot Richard Kelly is on hand as the television match official to aid O'Keeffe if required. First Test match officials Referee: Ben O'Keeffe (New Zealand) FPRO: Eric Gauzins (France)
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Oleksandr Usyk, Daniel Dubois and the danger of being young, free and fearless
After knocking out Anthony Joshua in the fifth round of a fight at Wembley Stadium last September, Daniel Dubois knew the hard part was still to come, so could not afford to relax. All around him, in a ring once empty, were people, cameras and microphones, each a reminder that his next task was to describe what he had just done. Think boy on the naughty step. Think suspect in the interrogation room. (Think, Daniel, think.) He had found the punches — crucially, a short right hand — but would now have to find words, typically more elusive. Now he would be asked how he did it. Now he would be asked how he felt. To pass the test, Dubois required words and emotions, two things prohibited during the fight. For some fighters, these things come back quickly, overwhelmingly so, whereas for others, like Dubois, the wait tends to be a long one. He is, when wearing gloves, unthinking and unfeeling and it can be no other way. It is how he likes and prefers it. It is how he has been programmed. Chances are, despite the danger of being alone in the ring with Joshua, he felt safe there, comfortable. There was only the referee to interrupt them and only Joshua's hands, his left and right, capable of either hurting or embarrassing him. He was, to some extent, in control of both the situation and himself. Then, when the fight ended, so did Dubois' control. Now he was back among the living, back among those with whom it was tougher to communicate and feel comfortable. Punches, in that world, no longer counted. They had all been thrown. They could no longer command respect, nor speak on his behalf and express his emotions. He instead had to find words. The right ones. 'Erm, I've only got a few things to say, man,' said Dubois, to the surprise of nobody. He then smiled and addressed the 90,000 fans in the stadium: 'Are you not entertained?!' Even louder: 'ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!' As familiar to the crowd as they were to Dubois, those four words may have started with Maximus Decimus Meridius, but had more recently been uttered by Tyson Fury and others in the aftermath of prizefights. For that reason, the words stuck with Dubois and he turned to them, automatically, when expected to speak, despite having been asked a question pertaining to the fight he had just won. It was, in a sense, no more than mimicry; a childlike mimicry. It required no introspection. It required no thought. The same, too, could be said of the way Dubois went after Joshua at Wembley that night. For even if there was thought and method behind what Dubois had plotted and executed — and there was — the important thing from his perspective was that he remained detached, cold, clear-headed at all times. Such clarity allowed him to shake from his mind the underdog tag and the reputation of his opponent, and it gave him the freedom to then attack Joshua from the outset. It also explained why Joshua, the thinker of the two, suddenly looked so overawed when confronted by a man able to clear his mind in a way Joshua, the former champion, no longer can. Why that is, one can only speculate, but we know this much: Damage and defeat lead to overthinking, and overthinking will often stifle a fighter's ability to act on instinct. That certainly seems true of Joshua, whose four professional defeats have all given him pause for thought. His first defeat, against Andy Ruiz back in 2019, revealed to him and to the world his fragility, while his next two, both against Usyk, highlighted his technical deficiencies. All three wounded Joshua and left him in a kind of no man's land, stuck between styles and a stranger to himself. If Ruiz reminded him of the need to be cautious and try to think and box a bit more, Usyk then cruelly reminded him of his limitations as a boxer before asking him: 'Who told you to think?' By the time Joshua suffered his fourth loss, against Dubois, he was a furrowed brow of a man; a knot of scar tissue and mixed signals. The last thing he wanted, in that state of mind, was an expressionless, one-track terminator looking back at him — staring not at him, but through him. Yet that is exactly what he got in the shape of Dubois. He got someone whose ignorance was a weapon and whose simplicity and spotless mind was preferable, in a fight, to a mind bloated by bad memories and associations. He got a man with no nerves and only the slightest hint of a pulse. A man empty, fearless, with whom Joshua could neither hang nor connect. Whether Joshua himself was an ignorant man trying to be a thinking man, or a thinking man trying to be an ignorant man, he wasn't up to playing either role. In Dubois, he had lost to an ignorant man, and against Usyk, to whom he lost in 2021 and 2022, he was bested by a thinking man. Both losses, aside from being painful, had indicated how far Joshua was from using either ignorance or wisdom as weapons, and both were reminders that being 'normal' — that is, neither simple nor smart — is sometimes the worst thing for a professional fighter. Against Usyk, for instance, that's all Joshua was: Normal. He was not clever enough to compete on the same level as Usyk technically, nor ignorant enough to risk everything and go for it the way Derek Chisora did, if only for four rounds, against the Ukrainian in 2020. As a result, Joshua suffered the same fate as every other Usyk opponent at either heavyweight or cruiserweight. He was tamed, he was controlled, and he was taken apart, psychologically as much as physically. Afterward, Joshua then grabbed the mic and demonstrated the extent of his confusion with a muddled monologue linguists are still attempting to translate to this day. It was in English, yet it made no sense. Usyk, it appeared, hadn't just beaten him. He had robbed Joshua of language. Usyk, meanwhile, was far more coherent. He simply said, 'I am feel,' as is his custom, and flashed that gap-toothed smile of his. He is, like Dubois, a man of few words, at least English ones, but that is fine, for nobody is counting. In fact, far from being stunted by the language barrier, Usyk has found comfort in a catchphrase and other eccentricities, seeming at times like a mime artist content to use their face to convey whatever is on their mind. By doing so, he not only defuses opponents by lulling them into a false sense of security, but he retains an element of mystery, which in turn makes him hard to read. His personality might be that of the court jester, but his actions in the ring are those of a genius — and yes, always hard to read. In the ring, Usyk shows that intelligence is not the ability to put words together in someone else's language. It is instead a different kind of fluency; a different kind of expression. With a language all of his own, Usyk makes right left, left right, and everything you do wrong. Of course, it's worth noting that Usyk is not the first Ukrainian heavyweight champion whose in-ring intelligence seems out of place in boxing. His predecessors, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, were every bit as smart and even had PhDs — both in sport science — to prove it. Vitali, now the mayor of Kyiv, was the older of the two brothers and the one less inclined to smile, whereas Wladimir had the friendlier exterior, a better grasp of English, and a greater interest in America and all it could offer. On fight night, there were other differences between the pair, and stark ones at that. In fact, often it was said that the best heavyweight in the world would be a combination of the two. From Wladimir you would take the left jab and the right cross, and from Vitali you would take the chin and the stamina. You might also look at their minds and combine those as well. For although these were both highly intelligent men, there was a subtle shift in mentality whenever they slipped on boxing gloves and entered the ring. In the case of Wladimir, this sometimes meant a period of overthinking and too much caution for fear of what could go wrong. In the case of Vitali, however, this meant a period of bring-it-on ignorance during which he would become liberated by the permission to hurt and relish the opportunity to give and take punches. It was quite the switch for Vitali, and one made only more jarring by how reticent Wladimir was by comparison, especially as his career progressed. One day Wladimir was the intrepid kid queuing up to ride the roller coaster with his big brother, and the next he was the old man standing back, cognizant of both how the roller coaster is made and how it can all go wrong. Early on, though, it's true: Wladimir had been as ignorant and oblivious as any heavyweight prospect starting out. He, like them all, fired his right hand with reckless abandon, and he too could see no way that either an opponent could take it or that they would have the temerity to fire back at him. But then, in 1998, Wladimir imploded against Ross Puritty, and with that first loss came a dose of reality and a degree of insight he could have done without. The excavation of self duly began, and everything Wladimir questioned, or doubted, was then compounded when Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster added supporting material to Puritty's initial findings. For a fighter like Wladimir, an awareness of pain, physical or of defeat, is in itself damaging. After all, an active, high-functioning brain like his tends to struggle to remove memories and associations and has difficulty considering anything, let alone defeat, as 'just one of those things.' Moving on, therefore, becomes a little more challenging. It can be done — and Wladimir eventually did it — but often what is required is a complete overhaul, of either style or attitude, and rarely, for better or worse, will the fighter ever be the same. In terms of Wladimir, some will say he improved for having lost multiple times, but cleverness and caution could never harmoniously coexist and seldom was he given the credit he deserved. His brother, on the other hand, received plenty. He was considered the warrior of the two, if only because he was less cerebral in style than Wladimir and fought with an ignorance easier to understand and enjoy. Vitali, you see, though beaten twice, had never been beaten like Wladimir. He had lost once by injury stoppage (against Chris Byrd in 2000) and once due to cuts (against Lennox Lewis in 2003), but on neither occasion did Vitali come away doubting himself or internalizing the events and associated trauma. Even if his body was damaged and his face cut up, his mind, in a boxing sense, remained spotless. Good as new. That ability to not belabor is key to any boxer's success and has clearly fueled Dubois' recent form. He, too, is no stranger to defeat, but rather than linger on it, or find himself blunted by it, sallies forth undeterred: Head down, keep going. His first loss, against Joe Joyce back in 2020, saw the Brit outworked and hurt — he suffered a fractured eye socket — before staying down on one knee to be counted out in Round 10. He was then just as hurt by the reaction to the loss, with many accusing Dubois of 'quitting' and suggesting that the nature of the defeat was more worrying than the defeat itself. The nature of the defeat, they said, had exposed a certain softness in Dubois, something impossible to remove by lifting weights or hitting bags. But he has, to his credit, since allayed this concern. His next defeat, in 2023, was inflicted by Usyk, the man he fights this Saturday at Wembley Stadium. In the presence of Usyk, Dubois' ignorance, so often a tool, was not only magnified but led to him being stopped in Round 9, having had very little success in the previous eight. The only question now, ahead of the pair's rematch, is how Dubois will react to that second loss and whether he opts to forget it completely or takes from it what he needs. Dwell too much on it and it might cloud an otherwise free and ignorant mind. However, complete ignorance and a disregard for the truth tends to only entice a repeat performance and the same result, with no lessons learned. It is, and always has been, a hard thing to balance and get right. Ask Dubois and perhaps even he won't know what he plans to do on Saturday night. Perhaps that's a good thing, too. Perhaps that's the point. As for Usyk, expect no more thorough explanation ahead of fight two. He also believes in the maxim 'show, don't tell' and has smiles, dance moves, and a catchphrase if ever he wants to deflect, or keep them all guessing. He will accept that fight two is likely to be different, but how different? That is the question. Dubois, once a challenger, now has a belt — the IBF title stripped from Usyk — and Usyk, who claims the other belts, is smart enough to acknowledge that his opponent, at age 27, is a different fighter from the one he disciplined two years ago. In a word, Dubois has matured. He is filling out hand-me-down suits and inside them feels grown and powerful. 'Tell this little boy he can't disrespect me,' said Joshua ahead of their fight last year. Yet Dubois, in the end, did more than just disrespect him: He reminded him how it felt to be young, free and fearless. Now, having come of age, Dubois is encouraged to make himself heard and has both a platform and an audience for whenever he finds his voice. He also has experience, as both a boxer and a man. No longer a boy, and no longer home-schooled by his dad, Dubois has, in his 20s, been busy learning other lessons — some painful, some harsh — and has even been lucky enough to have been schooled by the greatest teacher of them all: Oleksandr Usyk. The problem now, of course, is that Dubois must try to use everything he learned from that teacher against him, something only the bravest student would ever attempt. Either that or the most ignorant.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Sport
- Telegraph
English boxing referee suspended after pestering woman for threesome
An England Boxing referee was suspended by the sport after inviting a woman on a course he was running to have a threesome with him. Paul Rosendale, a well-known figure in the amateur sport, admitted pestering the fellow official for sex on social media following a conversation the previous night. Following Rosendale's suspension in March, a disciplinary panel ruled that his actions were 'serious and fundamentally inconsistent with the work of England Boxing in seeking to encourage more females to become involved in boxing, coaching and officiating'. Rosendale, who is in his 40s, had previously been a commended referee, having been nominated for awards for training 'in excess of 80 new and existing officials from the East Midlands, Yorkshire and Royal Air Force associations'. 'In fact, his contribution has led to the RAF Boxing Association having more officials than ever before,' said a 2023 citation for England Boxing official of the year. Rosendale became an IBA three-star referee and judge in November 2022 – the highest certification possible – but he was suspended from duty when authorities were told of his inappropriate conduct. Kathryn Hovington and Mark Harper KC, who sat on a disciplinary panel for England Boxing against Rosendale, suspended him 'for a period of 10 weeks commencing on 14 March 2025'. The panel recorded that following a course in September 2022 and 'following the verbal request', Rosendale made a 'request again for the female official to join a threesome with him' via social media. 'The panel did consider whether Mr Rosendale should be required to attend some form of training as it was concerned that Mr Rosendale was of the view that how a female acts (or is perceived to act) should determine what is/is not appropriate to say/send to her and that the appropriateness or otherwise of communications should be determined by the absence (apparent or otherwise) of offence on the part of the recipient,' their report says. 'Having given it due consideration, the panel was of the view that this would not be necessary as it expected that the experience of dealing with the charges, his remorse and the steps he was taking to address his underlying behaviours coupled with this decision, should be sufficient.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Former Carlisle United midfielder training to become a referee
A former Carlisle United player is training to become a referee. Ex-Blues midfielder Anthony Griffith is one of the latest ex-players to aim to make the switch to officiating. He is among the players looking to make the move through a programme run by the Professional Footballers' Association. The PFA revealed that Griffith was one of the officials for this week's pre-season game between a PFA free agent XI and Port Vale - another of his former clubs. Griffith was one of the assistant referees along with ex-Walsall midfielder Sam Mantom, while former Barnsley defender George Smith was in the middle. They are involved in the players union's "Player to Match Official" programme. The Port Vale game on Tuesday saw Kadeem Harris play for the PFA side as he continues to mull over a decision on his future. Former Carlisle players Sam Lavelle, Olufela Olomola and Paul Farman were also involved. The course was launched last year by the PFA and refereeing body PGMOL. Hughes weighs up Carlisle United captaincy decision Some ten current or former players are taking the three-year refereeing scholarship, which is funded and supported by the Premier League. PGMOL chief refereeing officer Howard Webb said: 'It's been fantastic to collaborate with the PFA on this programme and the level of interest from their members strongly indicates they feel this is an exciting opportunity to explore an avenue which could potentially lead them to the highest levels of our game – this time as a match official.' Griffith, 38, was on United's books in the 2014/15 season after bring signed by Keith Curle. He made 11 appearances for the Cumbrians. Another former Carlisle and Port Vale player, Chris Birchall, is also training to be a referee. FLASH SALE: Get unlimited access to every Carlisle United article by subscribing to the News & Star for £6 for 6 months or a full year at half price - click for details
