by David P. Greisman

Floyd Mayweather Jr. was unhappy with the judging for Badou Jack vs. Lucian Bute, in which two of the three scorecards had it a 114-114 draw while the third judge had Jack, Mayweather’s fighter, as the 117-111 winner. Jack, too, was also of course unhappy.

Ellerbe, the CEO of Mayweather Promotions, echoed his boss and his fighter in the post-fight press conference.

“It was a horrible decision tonight. Everyone who was watching knows that the fight wasn’t a draw,” Ellerbe said. “”These are the bad things that happen in boxing. It is very unfortunate. I’ve seen it. Nothing surprises me in this sport anymore. I can remember a couple years ago, there was a guy named Cinnamon [Canelo Alvarez] that fought Floyd and a judge gave him a draw against Floyd, and Floyd clearly won 11 out of 12 rounds.”

The lone local judge, Stephen Rados, was the one who had it 117-111 for Jack. The other two were appointed by the World Boxing Council, whose belt Jack holds. They were Omar Mintun of Mexico and Glen Crocker of Texas.

“In this particular case, the judges were WBC judges. And it was terrible,” Ellerbe said. “Just being honest. It was terrible.”

WBC chief Mauricio Sulaiman took to Twitter shortly after the fight to criticize those judges:

“I am extremely dissapointed with THE scoring of the 2 WBC judges And will certainly adress [sic] This matter,” Sulaiman wrote.

Ellerbe doesn’t think the solution to the various instances of poor scorecards would be having former boxers handle the role of scoring from ringside.

“Not necessarily ex-fighters. Just better judging,” Ellerbe said. “Obviously it’s a problem and it needs to be addressed. It’s not the worst decision I’ve ever seen, but Badou clearly won the fight.”

A British journalist then asked Ellerbe about whether there would be any concerns regarding the judging in the United Kingdom, as there’s a possibility that Jack will have a unification bout with James DeGale over there.

“We wouldn’t have any worries about that,” Ellerbe said. “In my opinion, the British judges are very fair judges.”

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com