When the scorecards were announced after the Jermell Charlo-Tony Harrison fight back in December, many fans at Barclays Center and some reporters on press row were surprised by what they heard. All three judges had it for the new WBC junior middleweight champion, Tony Harrison.
According to Charlo, there was a rematch clause in the contract, and recently, the WBC ordered a rematch between Charlo and Harrison.
After the bout, Charlo called the decision a robbery and called for a rematch, which is something Harrison is interested in doing. However, Harrison has some concerns about how the judges will handle the rematch.
“That’s the only thing that scares me,” Harrison recently told Paul Gant about the judges in a possible Charlo rematch. “Because it was the same thing with Ishe Smith when I fought Ishe Smith after he fought Julian Williams. I thought he(Ishe Smith) gave a hell of a performance, and I’m actually rolling with Ishe because I actually thought the scorecards were a little too wide on how competitive the fight was. After all that complaining that he did after the fight, which was very acceptable because I thought he deserved a little better scorecard than he had, but I think it affected me when I fought him next. They gave me a split decision when I thought I dominated him ten times more than Julian Williams did, so that’s mostly the only thing that scares me about fighting him(Charlo) again.”
Harrison does make a good point about the Julian Williams-Ishe Smith fight that took place November 2017. In that fight, Smith fought hard and gave Williams a very tough fight, but the scorecards were very wide. The scores for the fight were 99-91, 98-92 and 97-93 all in favor of Williams. Harrison fought Smith seven months later and dominated him for 10 rounds. Harrison won the fight, but the fight was way too close on the scorecards than it should have been. The Detroit native would win by split decision.
The controversial nature of the decision in the first fight with Charlo could make it hard for Harrison to win in a rematch. He might have to win more definitively the next time around. It may put Harrison in a tight spot and may force him to be more aggressive than he needs to be in the rematch.