MB’s Games: Anthony Ogogo drama long after his Khytrov fight was over
You may well have felt the nine minutes of action in the ring between Anthony Ogogo and Ievgen Khytrov was intense – but the three hours of working on the fight immediately after bordered on ridiculous.
Firstly came the protest from the Ukrainian officials – no particular surprise given the fine lines involved in Ogogo's last-16 victory at Excel Arena's boxing hall.
The Lowestoft fighter was 18-18 with the number one seed after three rounds.
Then it goes to countback scoring of punches thrown – where the score was announced as 52-52.
That left it up to the five judges to pick a winner – and they picked Ogogo. Simple? Well it should have been. Khytrov's appeal to the International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) needed to be based on some of technicality, rather than it simply being too close or wrong.
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Quite why the details, situation and indeed updates on the situation had to be so behind-closed-doors was a mystery – and cloak merely adding to the tension.
Anyway, and whichever way, AIBA's competition jury waved the appeal away as groundless and everyone moved on.
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Or at least they were supposed to. Next came a two our chase set off by one look at the official scores for Ogogo's bout – which noted the countback as 53-52 in Khytrov's favour.
A mistake? A typo? A miscalculation? A major controversy? So many questions…
Questions an intrepid band of journalists maraurding around Excel trying to find answers to. Seriously, I am quite confident in saying it was almost certainly a ridiculous sight.
Twitter buzzed at another boxing controversy – rumours reported as fact. After the previous night's boxing, many were beyond suspicious.
The answer from the AIBA two hours later? That those 'official' countback scores from three judges were different to the accumulated ones from all five used in the actual countback score – which seemed to make sense to me. And in a fight as close as that, no one could complain at Ogogo and his heart and desire coming out on top.
But I don't think I'll ever forget the dashing and panicking over all manner of possible outcomes. I'm just glad they came to the right one in the end…
