Darchinyan protests fight with Mares

After viewing the Abner Mares versus Vic Darchinyan bout several times, Elias Nassar, the manager of the former IBF/WBC/WBA champion is disgusted with the scoring and the referee of the SHOWTIME bantamweight bout. Nassar talks to Fightnews and gives reasons for his protest that includes YouTube links.

"I find it very difficult to accept the loss of my fighter after viewing the replay of the fight countless times. Directly after viewing the bout, I initially accepted the final result. I noted that the fight was very close and without bias I had Vic Darchinyan winning 114-112," said Nassar.

"I also initially accepted that the fight was close enough for any person who may have watched the bout to pick either fighter as the winner and the rounds could have been judged for the frequency of punches Mares was throwing or for the clean hard punches being landed by Vic."

Further Nassar said that he doesn't accept what he called the "sub standard officiating of the bout by referee Howard and one of the judges".

"In relation to one of the judges scorecard's, I am dumbfounded one judge could have scored nine out of twelve rounds to Mares including the last seven rounds. There is no way whatsoever that Mares could have won nine out of twelve rounds. What is also most alarming though is the refereeing of the bout. This collectively has lead to a official protest being lodged," he said.

"I purposely waited to view the bout in it's entirety to make one comment on the bout. Vic Darchinyan was hit with blatant and illegal low blows. Vic was hit with over 20 low blows over the duration of the bout, 14 of which were direct hits to his groin area. The game plan of Mares was to push Vic back, but with low blows. On the the fourth low blow administered by Mares he was deducted one point for that blatant low blow, for the remainder of the bout Vic was hit with a further 10 direct low blows, five of these low blows were given on the run warnings by referee Howard but there was no further point deductions. A week after the fight to our surprise a Sports Sciences documentary that was produced by the US Division of Fox Sports aired, this episode was produced two years earlier. It demonstrated what exactly happens when a fighter is hit with low blows. The person demonstrating the action of throwing a low blow was none other than Abner Mares."