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21 Sport BOXING maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2017 Boxing judge punished for her controversial scorecard THE action packed middle- weight showdown between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin that ended in a split draw was marred by one judge's highly controversial score. And that judge has now been tem- porarily stood down from ma- jor fights. Adelaide Byrd delivered a scorecard of 118-110 for Cane- lo Alvarez, which was way off in comparison to the 114- 114 from Don Trella and the 115-113 scorecard in favor of Golovkin from Dave Moretti. Byrd's scorecard sent boxing pundits and social media into a frenzy with accusations fly- ing about boxing officials being corrupt. The criticism came from all angles as even Canelo's promoter Oscar De La Hoya took issue with the wide mar- gin that Byrd scored the fight in favour of Canelo. "A lot of people are not under- standing 118-110, just like my- self. That's the bottom line," De La Hoya said during the post- fight press conference. "I think she needs to be re- viewed, go back to school and learn how to judge a fight," Golovkin's trainer Abel Sanchez stated. GGG could only shake his head when asked about the scoring by Byrd and called it "terrible" and "very bad for the sport." Bob Bennett, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, became a focal point of Saturday night's post-fight press conference and was taken to task over the se- lection of Byrd, who has had a history of controversial scores in both MMA and boxing. "I'm not going to put her right back in. She'll still be in the business but she needs to catch her breath," Bennett said. "…Like in any profession, you have a bad night. Unfortunate- ly, she didn't do well. I can tell you she conducts training for us, takes judges under her wing, but her score was too wide." There is no timeline on how long Byrd will be away from judging. However, a similar sit- uation took place in 2013 when C.J. Ross retired after produc- ing heavily criticized scores in both the Manny Pacquiao vs. Timothy Bradley fight as well as the Floyd Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez fights. Ross re- tired shortly after those fights. Adelaide Byrd's bi- zarre scoring of Gen- nady Golovkin's fight with Canelo Alvarez took attention away from the fight itself last Saturday. Adelaide Byrd The showdown between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin was one of the biggest fights of the year