The Byrd family had never seen more headlines.
Just a matter of weeks after referee Robert Byrd took charge of arguably biggest fight of 2017, his wife delivered a downright absurd scorecard after the only other bout which may have challenged for that honour.
Byrd was the third man in the ring when Floyd Mayweather stopped Conor McGregor in his boxing debut and, three weeks later, Adalaide Byrd cast an unwelcome spotlight on the standards of judging as she registered a 118-110 victory for Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez in his monster fight against Gennady Golovkin.
The insane scorecards alongside the Compubox stats of #CaneloGGG pic.twitter.com/QVGJ1tGrsy
— Darragh Murphy (@DarrMurphy) September 17, 2017
Now that the dust has settled on his first foray into the world of professional pugilism, ‘The Notorious’ feels like he may not have been given a fair shake against Mayweather.
“I thought it was an early stoppage. How the fuck can you stop a fight if there were no knockdowns or nothing previous?” McGregor said at an event on Friday night, with quotes via Peter Carroll of MMA Fighting.
“The round before that I almost had him dropped. I hurt him to the body in the round before. How the fuck can you stop it like that at the first sign of a wobble? You’ve got to let these fights go on.”
While unhappy with the manner of the stoppage immediately, McGregor never suggested anything untoward had gone on… Until now.
After witnessing the inexplicable scoring of GGG vs. ‘Canelo’, the reigning UFC lightweight champion went on to hint that there may have been something nefarious at play, courtesy of the Byrds.
“The referee was a weird one now the more I look back on it. Especially after Adalaide Bird had that thing with the Canelo and GGG fight, that was her,” McGregor continued.
“Adalaide and Robert Byrd are husband and wife, that’s a bit weird, that’s when I started looking back on the fight.
“Why did he not give (Mayweather) instruction? Why was he staring at me? He had a vendetta against me straight off the bat. Early exchanges in the tie up, instead of just separating he would reach around and pull me away.
“That takes energy away from me. I started getting – not paranoid – but I just started analysing the whole thing a bit deeper. I felt like I got the short end of the stick here.”
