Worst Boxing Robberies. Fact.

[Kirkland Laing]

lol, I have no ulterior motive.

I would love for some definitive proof to back up this claim about robberies in Europe. Or at least some history to find out where this idea originated from.

I can remember Harry Carpenter and/or Reg Gutteridge saying something like "the old saying that you need a knockout to get a draw in Italy." It just fits in nicely with the general Italian stereotype of everything being corrupt (although that's an accurate stereotype ). I'm not sure how many fights from Italy the BBC and ITV covered in the post-war years but I don't think it was too many, maybe that "old saying" comes from boxers and cornermen who fought out there, lost close decisions and maybe thought they'd done better than they had done and they're not exactly unbiased observers. There probably were one or two outright robberies in Italy over the years but I'm sure close decisions in Italy and Germany go roughly the same way they do in Britain and America, and that all countries are pretty similar in this regard.

That's exactly what I've been thinking.

Recently Colin Lynes lost in a European title shot to M'baye (non-Televised here). The word coming back was Lynes had been robbed, he said this himself on Steve Bunces radio show. And yet reports from neutrals that watched the fight said he lost a boring fight fair and square.

I think this probably happened numerous times in the past.

I just found a shit copy of Benn vs. Galvano 1 and the fight is a few seconds old before Reg says "there's no point in Benn trying to box this guy..... as you've probably heard the old saying about knock them out to draw is fairly true, there's only ever been two British fighters who won on points in Italy and they were both flyweights."