Sunday, January 15, 2017

Poor officiating continues to dog Invicta

At Invicta FC 20, the Bantamweight Championship changed hands due to a poor call by ref Mike England. Tonya Evinger appealed. The Missouri AC reversed the decision and now Tonya and Yana Kunitskaya will have a rematch in March. Those kind of mistakes are unacceptable and they are a byproduct of Invicta continuing to run shows in Kansas City when they should go elsewhere. One would think the Missouri AC would smarten up and use different refs. But when I saw that England was reffing last night's opening match, I knew something weird would happen. This time the culprit was ref Greg Franklin. And because of his incompetence, I have to talk about a prelim match before the main event because it overshadowed the rest of the show. The match was between Amy Montenegro and Celine Haga. The match itself deservedly won Match Of The Night. But the ending was one big screwup. So we're coming down to the final seconds of round three. Celine applies a rear naked choke that puts Amy to sleep. So Celine seems to win the fight. But Franklin called that the final bell came first and it would go to the judges. The decision went to Amy. But the replay showed that Franklin was very slow arriving to the scene. If he had been quicker, he could have made the correct call. I expect Celine to appeal this. But I don't know what the Missouri AC will do. There have been plenty of theories floating around but I think one thing overrides this. Franklin didn't SEE Amy go unconscious until after the fight was over. And he can only call what he sees. That's a can of worms that the AC may not want to open. Of course Invicta will claim to have no control over this. The answer is get the hell out of Missouri. The main problem is this is what fans are talking about instead of Megan Anderson winning the Invicta Welterweight Championship over Charmaine Tweet by first round TKO. Megan is an Aussie but she has improved a lot since moving to Missouri to train with UFC fighter James Krauss. Her dominance didn't surprise me as she has looked good since Krauss has been training her. Afterwards, she called out UFC president Dana White. She wants the winner of the upcoming UFC Welterweight Championship match. That could happen. Here's the rest of the results. Raquel Pa'aluhi won over Pannie Kianzad by first round rear naked choke. We'll see if Raquel can get a Bantamweight title shot this time. She has come up short in the past. Newcomer Leah Letson won over ex-UFC fighter Elizabeth Phillips with a first round head kick. I guess some might look at that as an upset. But Elizabeth did not perform well in the UFC. I was not familiar with Leah. She is from Wisconsin and she trains with UFC fighter Rick Glenn. Aspen Ladd remained undefeated with a unanimous decision win over Sijara Eubanks. Andrea Lee returned from a drug suspension with a win over Jenny Liou. This was a late stoppage. A body kick folded Jenny up but ref England missed it and stopped it after some extra punches landed. Jenny looked overmatched in this fight. And in the opener, Invicta newcomer Christine Ferea won over Rachael Ostovich with a third round head kick. It was another England late stoppage. Rachael is a very popular fighter because of her looks and the whole Wonder Woman thing. But she didn't look good in this fight. It might be time for her to go. So the fights were good but the refs were not. That can be fixed.

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