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17th Sep 2017

If you only see one reaction to GGG vs. Canelo, make it Teddy Atlas’

Treading the fine line between rant and meltdown

Darragh Murphy

We’d imagine Teddy Atlas isn’t the best at poker.

The veteran boxing trainer and commentator simply doesn’t have the ability to hide his emotions and it’s actually rather refreshing to see such unabashed honesty from a pundit.

Not even Gennady Golovkin was as pissed off about Saturday night’s shameful scoring of his long-awaited meeting with Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez as Atlas was.

The 61-year-old held nothing back in his scathing assessment of the outrageous 118-110 scorecard in Alvarez’s favour, delivered by Adalaide Byrd.

Atlas insisted that the landscape of boxing has been designed to facilitate corruption and that shady dealings pervade the sport to the point that it might never change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FN4qcNOYek

Atlas took it upon himself to debate fellow analyst, Stephen A. Smith, and he displayed typical passion as he laid into boxing for prioritising money over any sporting endeavour.

“Follow the money,” he said on ESPN. “Boxing doesn’t honor the things it should honour. It honours money, control, power. And there’s only certain power brokers in boxing, certain promoters, and they have the power.

“They have control who the judges are going to be, who the judges aren’t going to be, who they’re going to vote for. Las Vegas, where the money is going to come back there for the rematch.

“How can I stand here all week and say that there is going to be a controversial outcome? How do I know that?”