Steve Morrow doesn’t mind pressure. In his profession, you don’t
have a choice. A professional boxing judge for the World Boxing
Council the past 12 years, the Hollister man has learned to thrive
on making the right decision. He expects to judge for many years
yet, but he already knows his performance in one particular
fight
– despite the international turmoil it caused in the media –
will always remain one of his finest and most memorable. Bernard
Hopkins and Jean Pascal, then WBC light heavyweight champion, met
in Quebec last December for their first of two recent fights.
Steve Morrow doesn’t mind pressure. In his profession, you don’t have a choice.
A professional boxing judge for the World Boxing Council the past 12 years, the Hollister man has learned to thrive on making the right decision. He expects to judge for many years yet, but he already knows his performance in one particular fight – despite the international turmoil it caused in the media – will always remain one of his finest and most memorable.
Bernard Hopkins and Jean Pascal, then WBC light heavyweight champion, met in Quebec last December for their first of two recent fights.
Canadian and Belgian judges joined Morrow in deciding the 12-round decision. The other two scored it a draw, while Morrow had Hopkins winning 114-12. It meant the fight ended in a technical draw.
“I think that at least on the TV fights, where the commentators talk about the individual judges, they always refer to a notable fight, a notable decision that that particular judge has had,” said Morrow, 55. “For me, it’s going to the be the Hopkins-Pascal fight because for about the next two months, in the media I was the ‘American judge.’
“That’s how they referred to me and my score. It’s all good. I felt confident, and I still do.”
Still, he acknowledged that such international attention – a constant for a sport historically riddled with speculation – can be “a little disconcerting.”
Morrow didn’t judge the rematch May 21 when Hopkins beat Pascal – this time in Montreal – to become the oldest world champion of all time at age 46. But he does have a major, main-event match soon ahead, and he’s already getting himself prepared.
The retired cop who spent 31 years with the Gilroy Police Department, before retiring in 2008, started his second career as a boxing judge in 1998. On Saturday, he will work one of his biggest fights yet when middleweight champion Sebastian Zbik faces Julion Cesar Chavez, Jr. at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Of the high-profile fight, he said, “It’s a big step for me.”
What he called a long journey has led him to the biggest stage for pro boxing. Incidentally, his second career started on somewhat of a fluke. A longtime fan, he started writing for a boxing magazine in the late 1980s after a friend who did freelance assignments got him hooked up with the publication. For eight years, he wrote without pay as a ringside reporter, mostly on fights at larger venues in Sacramento and San Francisco. From that experience, he had the rare opportunity and found his way into an exclusive club of sorts as a boxing judge.
“It’s a very tight community, a very closed community – difficult to get into,” he said. “But through some good luck and fortune, I was eventually accepted into a yearlong training seminar.”
In 1999, he received his license. And what started as a hobby has “turned into just a great retirement gig for me,” he said. In just the past five years, Morrow recalled, he has judged in nine countries. Last month in Japan, he judged his 23rd world title fight.
“My first professional fight was in Monterey and I was scared to death and I made 60 dollars,” he said. “Now here I’m sitting, just back from a fifth trip to Japan. I’ve been to the Philippines, Korea, China. Who would’ve thought this would ever happen to me?”
It has been such gratitude, however, that keeps him grounded.
From his Hollister home Wednesday – which includes a room filled with memorabilia such as a collection of credentials from past fights, signed gloves, and an array of photos, such as one he proudly noted showing Morrow with legendary South African boxing judge Stanley Christodoulou – Morrow pointed to his appreciation as the reason for growing and learning along the way, as a reason for having these opportunities.
It helps that it isn’t easy to forget the immense challenge of being a boxing judge. And like an elite athlete, he has to mentally prepare himself for the bouts.
“It’s very real,” he said. “It takes me probably two or three days to get ready for a big fight. This particular fight in L.A. Saturday, I can already feel myself getting into what my wife calls my ‘game face.'”
On the scoring side, the three judges seated at separate ringside locations weigh the athletes’ “effective aggressiveness,” defense and what’s referred to as “ring generalship.”
“Everybody’s kind of heard of that phrase from the old days, but it still holds true,” he said. “Who’s in charge? Who’s taking the fight to the other guy?”
He said the job is all about concentration.
“You have to get yourself prepared mentally to concentrate for three minutes at a time,” said Morrow, who described the job as judging 12 separate three-minute bouts. “That doesn’t seem like much. But there will be 15 or 16 thousand people screaming behind you, all around you. You just kind of have to engage the mechanism, if you will.”
His wife has appreciated his path as well. As a paramedic professional working for the county, though, she initially wondered how athletes would choose such a violent endeavor.
“I found out it’s a very controlled and regulated sport,” said his wife, Marcie Lee Morrow. “These people are super-conditioned. The entire business is about making sure fighters are safe.”
And while she’s enjoyed seeing her husband’s success, she’s had the chance to experience many cultures along the way.
“Traveling the world with him has just been an honor we both enjoy,” she said.
This story will appear Friday in the Pinnacle.
More on Steve Morrow:
Family: Married with four adult children
Residence: Lived in Gilroy for 20-plus years; moved to Hollister in 2005
Career: Gilroy police officer for 31 years
Favorite all-time boxers: Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali
