C.J. Ross, the now infamous judge who scored Floyd Mayweather's decisive majority-decision win over Canelo Alvarez on Saturday night as a draw, officially has a history of marring boxing's best fights.
Following her controversial scorecard in the Mayweather-Alvarez bout, in which she scored it a 114-114 draw, Ross must be harshly disciplined and banned from judging anymore elite fights. After all, she was one of two judges who ruled in favor of Timothy Bradley in his controversial split-decision win over Manny Pacquiao back in June 2012.
Having now had a hand in two highly questionable calls in two of the biggest fights over the past 15 months, it's time for Ross to be replaced ringside at top-level fights by someone more credible.
Quite frankly, when your scorecard is described as a joke and travesty on more than one occasion, it's fair to say that you aren't doing your job correctly.
Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer was certainly shocked that Ross was put in a position to determine the outcome just over a year after her controversial ruling in the Pacquiao-Bradley fight, per USA Today's Bob Velin.
"How that judge could be appointed after the decision of Bradley and Pacquiao is not a question I can answer," Schaefer said. "How can that happen? Is it going to happen again?"
Schaefer brings up two excellent questions that Mayweather and boxing fans around the world deserve answers to.
Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director Keith Kizer has supported Ross' decision, according to Velin, essentially saying that even though a judge may score a fight as a draw, that doesn't mean the judge saw the fight as a whole as being a draw.
The problem with that argument is that Ross' scorecard reflected a draw after 12 rounds of boxing, despite the fact that Mayweather landed 46 percent of his punches to just 22 percent for Alvarez, according to CompuBoxOnline.com.
In the wake of such an obvious result, a better response would have been to acknowledge the oddity and promise improvement in the future. Instead, Kizer's response fails to lift the cloud of doubt and suspicion off the sport.
The NSAC would be better suited to recognize the scorecard as invalid and to discipline Ross for making her way into the news yet again for the wrong reasons. At this point, the only effective form of discipline would be to ban her from judging anymore big-time bouts.
The NSAC may have come out in defense of Ross in the wake of yet another crippling decision for the sport of boxing, but that doesn't mean it agrees with her or even thinks she was right to rule the way she did. It's simply a way of defending a questionable decision it made before the fight, letting Ross judge the bout.
The bottom line is that if she isn't coming off as being incompetent, Ross is certainly being perceived as corrupt.
Fortunately, her decision wasn't enough to unjustly damage Mayweather's legacy on Saturday night. Still, her controversial ruling no doubt hurt boxing and will bring down the sport even further if she isn't punished for it.
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