INSIDE SPORTS: TO ERR IS HUMAN AND TO FORGIVE, DIVINE
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Wed, 20 Feb 2008
When our good friend Bruce McTavish, the respected international referee who lives in Angeles City with his charming wife Carmen, one of the fine ladies from the illustrious Tayag family of Pampanga, called to say that New Zealand referee Lance Revill had suffered a heart attack, we were genuinely concerned.
The concern stemmed from the fact that Revill suffered the attack apparently while reading some really harsh if not vicious articles criticising the way he handled the highly controversial IBF super flyweight title fight between Z "The Dream" Gorres and Australia?s Vic Darchinyan.
We were relieved that we were not among those who jumped on Revill for what he did or failed to do because we were not at the fights to begin with. We feel that what most critics should have considered when assessing the performance of Revill was the fact that if anything, the unruly and disgraceful fans who pelted the ring with mineral water bottles and anything they could lay their hands on were as much to blame for the referee?s mistakes as anybody else. By all accounts even the judges were intimidated by the crowd which is to be expected since they were foreigners and probably feared for their lives.
That the lone Filipino judge awarded the fight to Darchinyan seems to indicate that if anything, Revill favored Gorres ? not that he had wanted to but was cowed into doing so because of the circumstances he found himself in. This is reinforced by the fact that even the Australian judge scored the fight a draw and came under bitter criticism from the Darchinyan camp for this.
We too have, at times, fallen prey to the instinct to criticize harshly and even today deeply regret some of these rare occasions. We have learned our lessons well and have always followed the incredibly sound advice of a gentleman who has been a sometime mentor and an all-time friend ? the eminent lawyer Rudy Salud.
Rudy always told us to put down in writing whatever we wished to say even though we were emotionally carried away. But he always advised us to sleep over it and if we felt the same way the following day, to send in the column. It was the soundest advice we ever received because ninety nine times out of a hundred we drastically altered what we wrote and thank God we did because we felt so much better for it.
We feel for Lance Revill because surely, in his first big international assignment abroad he is the kind of gentleman who would have dearly wanted to do a good job of which he is eminently capable of. But the circumstances conspired against him. We wish him all the best and hope he doesn?t take the bad press to heart and that he will soon recover from a fight that featured "The Dream" Gorres which, for Lance Revill turned into a veritable nightmare.
While we are on the subject of vicious criticism, there are those who have bitterly assailed our NABF champion Bernabe Concepcion for what some of them felt was a poor showing while others continue to loosely use the word "bum" in referring to some of our boxers. This is shameful because these young men are doing their very best for their country and at the same time striving to improve the quality of their lives.
Concepcion fought well. He beat a tough Mexican in his own backyard. He won praise from WBC president Don Jose Sulaiman and Top Rank promoter Bob Arum who were both at the fights. The astute Arum said Concepcion put on an excellent show against a rugged opponent and that the Mexicans love Concepcion. It is indeed sad if not a shame that while the people of the man he beat admired Concepcion some Filipinos sought to put him down. Meanness has no place in boxing. Let?s support our young fighters and lift their spirits and as for referee Lance Revill its best to remember that we all make mistakes at one time or another and that to err is human and to forgive, divine.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ronnie Nathanielsz.
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