By Rick Reeno

Junior middleweight contender Carlos Molina (19-5-2, 6KOs) is planning to appeal his controversial ten round disqualification loss to James Kirkland (31-1, 27KOs), says promoter Leon Margules to BoxingScene.com. On Saturday night at the Reliant Arena in Houston, Texas - Molina was ahead on two of the three offical scorecards, with tallies of 88-83 and 87-84, when he was knocked down at the end of the tenth round.

Molina went down as the bell rang. He quickly got up as the referee was giving him a standing eight count. Around the count of six, it appeared that one of Molina's cornermen stepped in for a second and the referee advised him that it wasn't time to enter the ring and he hopped back out.

Here is where it gets messy.

Referee Jon Schorle, after telling Molina's cornerman to get out, returns back to Molina to continue his count. Not only does he continue his count, he even asks Molina "are you okay" - which every referee asks a fighter in order to determine if the boxer in question is capable of continuing.

After Molina indicated to Schorle that he was okay and capable of fighting on, Schorle then ordered both fighters to get back to their respective corners. Then Schorle speaks to a few people at ringside and decides to disqualify Molina for his cornerman entering the ring.

"We are absolutely going to file an appeal once we conduct a thorough investigation. You can’t really react at ringside without looking at videotape. But there were a lot of things wrong, or appeared to  be wrong. And they will probably get confirmed by tape. But at the end of the day, a decision like that hurts boxing. The fighters were robbed of their ability to finish what was turning into a very interesting fight," Margules told BoxingScene.com.

"Why would you stop the fight? In basketball it’s called ‘no harm, no foul.’ What was the purpose of disqualifying him? The bell rang and the corner reacted. There [was someone from the commission posted in the Molina's corner and] he didn’t do anything [to prevent Moninal’s cornerman from entering]. He heard the bell too.  What does a corner do? When they hear the ten second [signal], they get near the edge of the ropes and when the bell rings they run up and take their change and that’s what they did."

"Molina was on his feet when all of this happened anyway. [Molina's cornerman] got in and got out. The referee ordered the fighters to their corners, and then he talked to everybody at ringside. Golden Boy was screaming to disqualify him and they disqualified him. If a guy gets knocked down before the end of the round, the bell is not supposed to ring until the count is over, because the corner is going to react until the end of the bell."

One infamous incident, back in 2006, saw trainer Roger Mayweather enter the ring during the tenth round of a welterweight fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Zab Judah. Roger started a brawl with Judah's corner. Once order was restored, Floyd was not disqualified and the fight continued.

"Roger Mayweather jumped in the ring and started a fight and they didn’t disqualify [Floyd]. He started a fight with the other corner and they didn't disqualify [Floyd]," Margules said.