Sadly however last weekend showed that there is such a thing as a British stoppage as veteran referee Terry O'Connor made a complete hash up of things as Chris Eubank Jr (9-0, 4) stopped Latvian banger Olegs Fedotovs (15-10, 11). The referee first stepped between the two fighters early in the second round (around 28 seconds in to the video below) distracting Fedotovs who took a hard shot just seconds later.
If his first balls up had finished the fight then we'd have complained loudly, sadly however O'Connor failed to control the action in the following minute or so before finally waving the bout off with Fedotovs looking completely fine. Whilst, as you can see in the video, Eubank was getting the better of things with his superior speed he was being tagged back by Fedotovs who was doing a solid job of defending himself.
The decision to stop the fight didn't seem to please either fighter with Eubank clearly shrugging his shoulders at the stoppage whilst Fedotovs appeared to be making it very clear that he was in no harm. In fact Fedotovs wanted little to do with the referee following the stoppage and was very reluctant to even look at O'Connor as the official announcement was made. In fact Fedotovs made it very obvious that he wasn't going to hold O'Connor's hand until the referee forcibly grabbed his wrist in an aggressive manner that further rubbed salt in to the wounds of a fighter who had genuinely be
When you look at who Fedotovs has been in with, including the likes of former title contenders Henry Weber, Andy Lee and Khoren Gevor as well as current WBA interim Super Middleweight world champion Stanyslav Kashtanov. We know he's a tough guy and only Gevor from that list of fighters has managed to stop him. Sadly this victory, on paper will make Eubank seem like he's on that level when really it was a number of botched calls by 59 year old O'Connor who simply failed to do his job.
I'm happy to call a spade a spade and from this showing O'Connor looked completely clueless and the stoppage was a disgrace. Hopefully Fedotovs got a rightful apology and won't be refusing to fight in Britain, though stoppages like this really make me wonder why any fighter fights in our great country.
Video below is thanks to UsernameYouCantHate