Brick City Boxing

By: James Thurston Wallstreet III

On July 11th, 2009 at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bobby Gunn tried to snatch the IBF and Ring Magazine Championship from the grasp of Tomasz Adamek. Instead the Ringside Doctor snatched away what could have been a Rocky like story from the grasp of Bobby Gunn. Let me make this clear, I am not saying that Mr. Gunn would have won or even gone the distance, but he was the victim of a disgusting premature stoppage.
In my last article I touched on this fight when going over the investments people should make. I found it ludicrous that a World Title fight had the over/under of 4.5, and it was paying out a dividend of 1.5/1. This is what I stated:

“Investment Opportunity- Tomasz Adamek (-2500) vs Bobby Gunn (+1100)
Investment Decision- I said before I was not going to touch this fight due to hometown favorites, but the over/under has caught my eye. I am pretty much positive it will make it to the 5th round. My final decision is $100 on over 4.5 (+175).”

[More:]

The day of the fight I took notice of the fact that the over/under had jumped to 5.5, so my belief is that the general public agreed with me.
As I was watching the 4th round I noticed Mr. Adamek was landing some good clean shots but was also being goaded on by Mr. Gunn who did not seem to be hurt that badly. After the flurry in the last 10 seconds by Mr. Adamek, Mr. Gunn just kind of shook it off and walked to the corner (showing no signs of needing the doctor in his corner).

Then the travesty happened. The doctor stepped in and stopped the fight on a “cut”. A cut that was extremely hard to even notice while watching it. The best part was after the fight Referee Earl Brown said, “”The doctor looked at the cut [over Gunn's left eye] and recommended that I should stop it.”…and, “I was ready to give him a little longer.” Last time I checked in title fights only a Referee can stop a fight. If he thought Mr. Gunn could keep fighting, why not allow his shot at glory to continue?

There should be some type of investigation made to determine if the ringside doctor might be a betting man. He may have saw the line jump, and like most people who thought Mr. Gunn wouldn’t last 3 , put a nice hefty investment on that under. That is the only reason he could have had to call a halt to the action.

When things like this happen it is bad for the sport altogether, it makes the claims of boxing opposers seem somewhat reasonable. As a fan first of the sport that I love, I felt I should bring attention to this before too much time passes. Also i plead with the NJAC to look into this more thoroughly, so maybe a travesty like this will not happen again