Referee Amy Pu is getting torched after she refused to accept not one but two towels from Dan Garber’s corner Saturday night at The O2 Arena in London. Seconds later, Irish heavyweight Adam Olaniyan put Garber down with a massive shot to the head.
Bloody Elbow laid out the sequence. Olaniyan had been dominating and dropped Garber with a big body shot in Round 2. Garber’s corner had seen enough and threw the towel. Pu didn’t catch it, so they threw a second one. Olaniyan himself tapped the referee on the shoulder to point it out. Pu then walked across the ring and kicked both towels away, and the fight continued.
The Dubliner did what any fighter does when the ref waves him back in. He landed a head shot that produced a far nastier knockdown, and a third towel came flying in. Pu still gave Garber a count to eight before she finally waved it off.
Boxing News’ Danny Gilfillan was ringside and posted on X: “Dan Garber receiving oxygen after referee Amy Pu inexplicably refuses the corner’s towel and allows Olaniyan to pile more damage in.”
A rough night from the opening bell
The towel fiasco came after an earlier controversy on the same card. During the prelims, Pu stopped a four-rounder between Aaron Noriega and journeyman Leonardo Baez with 90 seconds still on the clock, and fans hated that call too. Bloody Elbow suggested Pu arrived at the main card aware she needed to let the action breathe after the early stoppage. If that was the plan, she swung all the way to the other extreme and took Garber’s health with her.
Olaniyan’s O2 Arena debut was one of the draws of the night, and the knockout should have been his moment. Instead the clip making the rounds is a referee punting terrycloth across the canvas while the fighter who’s winning tries to tell her the other guy’s team wants out.
The reaction online was savage. One user on X wrote, “The worst referee in boxing strikes again,” and added, “Amy Pu must be removed from the sport.” Gilfillan went past Pu to the rulebook: “Rules should be changed to make the towel coming in an automatic fight ended. Ref’s don’t know what’s been happening in the gym.”
My take
Gilfillan is right, and this shouldn’t even be a debate. A corner throws the towel because they know their guy. They know how he’s been sparring, what he’s been eating in camp, and whether that body shot is the one that broke him. A referee has had about six minutes of information. When the people who love the fighter most say stop, the fight stops. No count, no appeal, and definitely no soccer. Olaniyan earned that knockout, and he showed more awareness in that moment than the official did when he tapped her shoulder. Garber ended the night breathing from an oxygen mask because two clear signals got kicked out of the ring, and the British Boxing Board of Control should be asked about it Monday morning.
