The referee presiding over Tyson Fury's clash with Dillian Whyte has never been in charge of a heavyweight world title bout before.
Liverpool's Mark Lyson will be the referee for the fight, his first time in such a setting. The bout will feature no British judges after a string of controversies, and will see Fury have minimal involvement with the British Boxing Board of Control, only receiving a temporary licence to allow him to compete.
Italian official Guido Cavalleri, Canada's Robert Tapper and Juan Carlos Pelayo from Mexico will be in charge of choosing the winner on the scorecards. It was requested by Fury's team that there be minimal British officiating, with the Josh Taylor vs Jack Catterall split decision seemingly too egregious for them to risk having British involvement.
Fury is primarily licensed by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, where his last four fights have been, and he will compete under a temporary BBBoC licence. He has had issues with the governing body before, and was suspended by them as the UK Anti-Doping agency looked into a positive test for the performance-enhancing substance nandrolone from 2015.
He hasn't fought on British soil since his 2018 bout with Francesco Pianeta at Windsor Park in Belfast on the undercard of Carl Frampton vs Luke Jackson. He had done one other comeback fight in Manchester, but then proceeded to move to America after fighting Deontay Wilder in Los Angeles and subsequently signing a broadcast deal with ESPN.
"I think the judging these days is a disgrace," Fury said in an interview with BT Sport days after watching Catterall lose an outrageous split decision to Taylor for the undisputed super lightweight titles. "I think they need a good kick in the a*** for it - they can't change the decision now and they've absolutely destroyed Jack Catterall's life and career.
"It's disgraceful. I’ve seen an article recently where Frank Warren said there would be no British judges for this fight and I reiterate that as well. Those words echo around my training camp, we don’t want British judges for this fight, we want proper, experienced, judges who will do the right thing."
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Warren would later explain that he felt judges needed to be held accountable for poor decisions, and have examples made of them when they allow for bad results like Taylor vs Catterall to happen. He told iFL TV : "You change it by making people accountable," he continued. "You do what they do with football referees.
"If a football referee screws up for any reason or he's not put in a good performance or a couple of performances, then the Football League, the Premier League, whoever it may be, the association, they look at it and then they decide what they're going to do. Invariably, if they feel it's appropriate, they downgrade them.
"You have to do something, you can't just let them keep rolling over onto the next one and just say; 'we're going to have an inquiry, we're going to have a chat about it at the next board meeting', have a chat the next board meeting and say, alright, that was bad,' and then appoint someone again for a big fight. That can't happen anymore - it's got to stop."
