International Boxing Federation Championship Committee chairman Lindsey Tucker is standing by the officials picked to handle the lightweight title eliminator between Zahir ?The Z Man? Raheem and South Africa?s Ali Funeka on July 5 in East London.
Tucker was responding to our queries following a newspaper article in South Africa which stated that the manager of Funeka, Mzi Mnguni was upset because the fight supervisor, the referee and one judge were all from the U.S and claimed "it is obvious that American officials will favor Raheem and I don?t understand how the promoter can allow this to happen.?
In an email to Viva Sports, Tucker said the supervisor (Aaron Kizer) and the referee don?t score the fight and the IBF is confident that the referee (Earnie Sharif) will be fair and impartial. He said Sharif ? is one of our best referees and we never had a complaint against him.?
Tucker pointed that as far as the judges were concerned one is from the USA (Steve Weisfelt), one is from South Africa (Alfred Buqwana) and the third from England (Dave Parris), adding ?I can?t see how anybody can be unhappy about this. We picked them because they will be fair and they are all very good judges.
The IBF official also made it clear that they never received an official protest from anyone connected to the title eliminator.
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