Pat Russell, the retired California boxing referee, had an unusual style of training. While many other refs focused on standard cardio workouts to build the stamina needed to stay in lockstep with a pair of prizefighters over 12 championship rounds, Russell liked to rehearse the actual techniques he used in the ring.
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He would go to the gym, climb into the boxing ring by himself, and visualize end-of-round scenarios, hurt fighters tying up while they recover, and inside fighters trying to sneak low blows on the referee’s blindside. Russell would practice the footwork and movements he’d learned over the years: how to glide, pivot and slide around the ring without taking his eyes off the fighters; methods of wedging his elbow to create space between boxers who won’t stop holding; the way he’d thrust his arm into the crossfire at the sound of the bell, then lunge in with his head craned as far away from danger as possible to stop the action. He repeated these mechanics over and over with the same intensity and quickness he’d need in a bout, and by the time his sessions were finished, the sweat stains on Russell’s shirt made it clear he’d also done his cardio.
To some bystander on a treadmill, Russell’s “shadowreffing” must have looked batty. But the routine served him well over a 35-year career that included legendary fights like Timothy Bradley Jr.-Ruslan Provodnikov, Rafael Marquez-Israel Vasquez III, and Kennedy McKinney-Marco Antonio Barrera.
“I was blessed to have been in the ring with some of the greatest fighters of my generation,” Russell recently told The Athletic, “on some of their greatest nights ever.”
On June 27, 2015, however, it was the timing of one of these moves, which Russell had practiced thousands upon thousands of times, that precipitated the end of his days as a referee. That night, the then-69-year-old Russell worked a welterweight title fight between Bradley and Jessie Vargas. The first 11 rounds were uneventful, with Bradley outboxing and outworking an opponent who wasn’t quite on his level.
Bradley entered the 12th with a comfortable lead on all three scorecards, and since he’d never been stopped, Vargas appeared to have little chance of scoring a dramatic knockout in the final round. But with 21 seconds on the clock, Vargas dipped his lead shoulder and came over the top with an overhand right that nearly knocked Bradley down. Bradley retreated to the ropes and sideways galloped a half-circle around the ring, while Vargas chased. After deflecting a Vargas left hook, Bradley lurched forward and wrapped his arms around Vargas.
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Russell stepped in to break the clinch just as the ringside timekeeper clapped out the 10-second warning. Ten seconds for Bradley to survive the round and escape with a win; 10 seconds for Vargas to complete a miracle upset.
When Russell pried the fighters apart, however, instead of letting the clock tick down, the referee waved his hands and said, “No! No! No! Fight’s over.” Vargas thought Russell had awarded him a TKO victory and ran to the corner to celebrate. Bradley stood still, with his arms extended by his sides and a baffled look on his face. Nobody knew what had happened until HBO commentator Max Kellerman figured it out.
“Pat Russell thought he heard the bell,” Kellerman said. “He heard the 10-second warning. Vargas thinks he’s won by knockout; he has not.” HBO’s ringside judge, the late Harold Lederman, chimed in to say that those lost seconds were Vargas’s “only chance to win the fight, and Pat Russell stole it from him.” When Russell told Kellerman, “I thought I heard the bell, so the fight was over when the bell went off,” he pointed to his earlobe, lending his visage to a meme that still resurfaces when referee errors become a talking point on social media.
Pat Russell has no idea why these guys stopped fighting and went back to their corners. pic.twitter.com/LkmMKCR28f
— Peacelord (@tylerbox12) October 4, 2015
Four years after Bradley-Vargas, concerns over aging referee performance and fighter safety have returned to the forefront of the boxing discussion. This June, while refereeing the World Boxing Super Series cruiserweight semifinal between Mairis Briedis and Krzysztof Glowacki, Robert Byrd missed the bell at the end of Round 2. The 76-year-old referee’s mistake led to Glowacki suffering a knockdown that clearly contributed to the fighter’s TKO loss in the following round. Byrd is one of the most accomplished and respected referees in the sport, but his handling of Briedis-Glowacki led fans to call for his retirement.
As disturbing as it was to see one fight’s outcome affected by referee errors, the ensuing what-ifs were even more upsetting. A month after Briedis-Glowacki, two boxers, Maxim Dadashev and Hugo Santillan, died in the same week from brain injuries they sustained in separate fights. Neither death was attributed to bad refereeing, but with memories of Byrd’s off-night still fresh, it was hard to avoid imagining how a referee’s mistake might someday contribute to another tragedy.
Pat Russell’s misheard bell wound up being a minor entry in boxing’s vast ledger of injustices. Vargas was denied some infinitesimal chance at winning, but the incident was filed away as a regrettable ending to a fight that ultimately went to the deserving victor. Twitter had its fun with the Russell screenshots and life went on.
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But not for Russell. The blunder reminded him of a vow he had made when he began refereeing.
“I made a promise to myself that if I was not able to do this job, physically or mentally, I was gonna walk away,” Russell said. “I was not going to allow my physical inabilities to jeopardize unnecessarily or cause further damage to these kids in the ring. Nobody was gonna say I stayed 15 minutes too long. I wouldn’t want to live with that.”
Jessie Vargas celebrates as he mistakenly thinks referee Pat Russell has stopped the fight on a knockout over Timothy Bradley Jr. (Stephen Dunn / Getty)
Two days after the Bradley fight, Russell saw an ear specialist, who tested his hearing. The doctor informed Russell, a former Army paratrooper who had served in Vietnam and then went on to a 31-year career as a San Diego district attorney investigator, that his decades in the military and in law enforcement had taken a toll on Russell’s hearing.
“You got tinnitus,” Russell recalled the doctor telling him. “All those years in the military and the cops, all those guns going off in your ear — both ends of your hearing are starting to go. Eventually, you’re going to need hearing aids.”
Russell asked the doctor if he could guarantee that with treatment, Russell wouldn’t hear bells going off when there weren’t any. “He looked at me,” Russell said, “and he smiled and said, ‘I can guarantee that you will.’”
An hour later, Russell called Andy Foster, executive director of the California State Athletic Commission to break the news.
“I’m going to retire,” Russell told his boss. “If you want to keep me till the end of the year, that’s fine, but I’m not going to renew my license as a referee.”
Friends and colleagues pleaded with Russell to reconsider. They told him he was overreacting, that it was only one mistake, that hearing aids would help him extend his career in the ring. Russell wouldn’t budge. He has moved on to judging California fights, but he reffed his last fight at the end of that year.
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“It was either I kept the promise or I didn’t,” Russell said. “As a friend of mine once said, when they put me out to pasture, I want to graze with pride.”
Name some of boxing’s most recognizable and respected referees, and chances are they’re either old enough for most senior discounts or a couple of years away from eligibility. California’s Jack Reiss, Nevada’s Tony Weeks, and Quebec’s Michael Griffin are in their early 60s. New York’s Eddie Claudio is 64. New Jersey-based Steve Smoger is 69. So is Nevada’s Kenny Bayless.
Across the board, the sport’s stakeholders value veteran referees precisely because they’ve spent decades in the sport, officiated hundreds of championship bouts, and have proven their ability to handle boxing’s unforeseeable surprises.
“What makes these guys so good is the respect that they’re given,” explained Foster, the California commission head. “They get some deference based on their years of experience and good experience breeds excellence. If you’ve seen this three or four times in your career, you’re more likely to pick up on it again quicker than somebody who never saw it before. And this commission owes that to the athletes that have gotten to the pinnacle of their career. We owe it to all athletes.”
Referee Steve Smoger steps in during a bout between Denis Lebedev and Victor Ramirez during a championship bout in 2016. (Valery Sharifulin / TASS / Getty)
Smoger, the only Hall of Fame referee still active in the sport, said that the renown he accrued for being the third man in the ring for fights like Kelly Pavlik-Jermain Taylor 1 and Andre Ward-Chad Dawson helps him establish authority every time he steps between the ropes.
“In every venue, my reputation preceded me,” Smoger said. “To this day, (fighters say), ‘I’m glad I got you. You’re gonna let me fight.’ They know I’ll give every fighter every opportunity to decide the issue, and only intervene when it’s absolutely necessary.
“I gave respect and I expected and received respect from every fighter I worked,” Smoger added. “I was never disrespected — not even (Mike) Tyson, on two occasions.”
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The question, then, is how can top referees extend their prime years, which tend to come later in life, while still remaining physically fit and mentally sharp enough to keep up with every twist the sport throws at them? And how can they know, as Russell did, when to step back?
“You don’t recognize the aging process if you stay in shape,” Smoger said. His routine, until he hit his late 60s, was a daily 36-minute run — equal to 12 three-minute rounds — on the treadmill or the Atlantic City boardwalk.
“Conditioning has always been my hallmark,” he said. “For self-pride, and because, to me, fighters are the best-trained athletes in the world. If they can train, I can train. I’m in with guys that are cut like frickin’ stone, and you don’t want to have a belly.”
Smoger’s first world title assignment, a 1986 flyweight championship fight in South Korea, came thanks to his reputation at the time for being quick enough to manage the frenetic pace of the smaller weight classes.
“They wanted a fast-moving, out-of-the-way referee,” he recalled. “They liked me because I didn’t block anybody.”
New York referee Eddie Claudio said he prefers to leave those opportunities to Smoger.
“I try to stay away from flyweights,” he admitted. “They’re like busy-bees. They’re so quick: If you’re in their way, they gonna run your ass over.”
Claudio’s workouts are more varied than Smoger’s — a mix of jogging, lifting weights, casual bowling, shooting around at Brooklyn outdoor basketball courts.
“I’m not no gym rat,” Claudio said, “but you gotta stay in some kinda shape because you got these fighters’ lives in your hands. But I love the big guys because they don’t make you run. They just stand there and throw.”
When it comes down to it, though, physical fitness ends up being one of the less important attributes of boxing referees. Whether an official is an ultra-marathoner or a couch potato, he still won’t be able to physically impose his will on world-class prizefighters.
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“If two 250-pound men want to hold each other, you’re not gonna separate them with a crowbar,” Russell said. “The way you deal with that is by the prestige of your positioning and through pre-fight instructions: This is what I’m gonna tolerate and what I’m not gonna tolerate. You take command in the ring, otherwise there’s no way I’ll be able to pry those guys apart.”
A similar emphasis on positioning and communication also helped Smoger age gracefully in the ring.
“As I matured, I felt myself slowing a tad,” he said. “But I was positioning myself better and always in place to implement a verbal command, then be a foot away to follow it up if a fighter didn’t immediately follow.”
Referees often deflect praise in conversation, but the duty they carry out in the ring is anything but humble. In fact, the ref’s job is an act of unvarnished megalomania. For three minutes at a time, they hover within arm’s reach of the most dangerous boxers in the world, feeling the air ripple around the absolutely lethal punches whizzing by just inches away, and accepting the responsibility of keeping the fighters alive in a sport that permits them to beat each other almost to death.
“They are the first and last line of defense,” Foster said. “That referee will decide the right outcome of the fight or they won’t. That referee will decide oftentimes if that fighter will go to the hospital or if that fighter lives.”
That referee creates the abstraction that allows us to admire the craft and skill and grace and courage in boxing, rather than dwelling on its cruelty. And although that referee understands better than anyone the mortal stakes of his role, he’s also proud of it. Anyone willing to embrace the power that referees hold over boxers’ lives better have an ego.
“What we are doing is, we are stripping away everything else and we are exposing the fighting soul of another human being,” Russell said. “This is the most difficult officiating job in the world, bar none. I don’t care what you say about the Super Bowl and the World Series. The stakes are so much higher as a boxing referee — and an MMA referee, I presume — than any other sport. You are the responsible party. You don’t get to point to anybody else. You’re the one that makes that critical decision. One punch too much? One punch too little? And you’ve gotta be perfect every time.”
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Basically, every professional boxing match is an exercise in tempting fate, and the referee is there to keep everyone on fate’s good side.
“That’s what makes it so damn hard,” Claudio said. “You got these guys’ lives in your hands and you want to make sure that all three of you came in the ring together and all three of you are gonna leave the ring together — and that’s not always easy to do.”
Referee Eddie Claudio checks on Mike Ruiz in his fight with Glen Tapia in 2011. (Al Bello / Getty)
In many cases, when older referees receive some sign that their ability to ensure fighters’ safety has slipped, that’s when they get out. A knee or hip replacement may force the issue. It could be a slip-up in the ring that only they noticed or a more public mistake like the one that led Russell to get his ears checked.
“At this point, I think I still got some mileage yet,” Claudio said. “I haven’t found my senior moment, something like giving an eight-count to the wrong guy. That happened to a few friends of mine but we won’t mention no names. But believe me this: When I do encounter that senior moment, it’s time for me to throw in the towel.
“I can’t think about me and the little money I make doing this and the travel,” Claudio continued. “I gotta think foremost about these fighters who I’m supposed to protect. God forbid if somebody gets hurt under my watch because I failed to do my job. Thank God it hasn’t happened — I hope it never does.”
Smoger still referees, but he’s purposefully scaled back over the past two years, a move he began contemplating back in 2015 after he was inducted to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
“The burden, when you referee after you’ve made the Hall, is that you’ve got the whole Hall on your back,” Smoger said. “It’s double pressure. People will say, ‘This guy made the Hall of Fame and he did that?’”
Although Smoger continued working a handful of major world championship fights in 2015 and ‘16, an opportunity to join NBC’s broadcast team as a rules expert kept him sidelined for 15 weekends over the course of a year. Smoger couldn’t pass up the chance to call major PBC fights alongside Marv Albert and Sugar Ray Leonard, but watching from ringside with a headset tortured the part of Smoger that still wanted to be in the middle of the action.
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“I wanted to continue reffing so bad on all 15 occasions,” Smoger said. “I walked into the arena in Las Vegas, and Floyd Mayweather says, ‘Hey, No. 1 is in the house. Which one you doing tonight Steve?’ I said, ‘Floyd, I’m in another role. I’m working with Sugar Ray.’ That eased the pain, that I could say I was working with Sugar Ray, but that year was very difficult.”
Smoger returned to a full refereeing schedule after his NBC contract was up, but when he did, he noticed a change in his mentality.
“My transition began in ‘15, and then I was still very active in the ring through ‘17,” Smoger recalled. “But there was a major difference. I started to dread the undercard work.”
Typically, if there are 10 fights on a big weekend card, the state commission will assign two referees to the event and split the fights between them.
“But you can’t be a prima donna,” Smoger insisted. “You can’t say I’m only going to do the main. If you’re assigned four under and one over, you do it. In my heyday, I relished and reveled in the work. Sometimes another ref wouldn’t show up and I’d work back to back to back. No problem, give me ‘em all. I was like (Cowboys running back) Ezekiel Elliott: Feed me!”
It wasn’t the physical demands of working four undercard fights plus a main event that troubled Smoger. Like an elite fighter who can’t will himself to train seriously before bouts with lesser opponents, Smoger found himself struggling to locate his passion for working smaller fights.
“When I noticed my lack of desire to complete an entire card, that was my sign,” Smoger said. “I never thought for one moment, even recently, that I was any less than I should be in the ring. But psychologically, when I wasn’t looking forward to it anymore, that was the sign.”
But just as he did for fighters in his refereeing prime, Smoger, the official who gave Kelly Pavlik every chance to survive Round 2 against Jermain Taylor, has found ways to extend his time in the ring. He’s been judging in Rhode Island and other states in the Northeast, and he linked up with the International Boxing Association, a smaller sanctioning body that assigns Smoger to ref many of their championship main events.
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“The IBA sends me somewhere once a month, which is perfect for me at this stage,” Smoger said. “When you’re in the ring, you are the person in charge of that event. There’s nothing like being in there. You see the shots, the action. It’s a trilogy — you and the fighters.”
As Smoger approaches 70, his relationship with the IBA doesn’t only allow him to remain connected to the sport he’s devoted four decades of his life to, it also keeps him ready, just in case the call comes for one last huge fight.
“For one fight,” Smoger said, “12 rounds, 36 minutes — I’m still one of your top guys. I can give it all.”
(Top photo: Stephen Dunn / Getty)
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