Robert Byrd did not say judges screwed up

In an effort to restore referee Robert Byrd’s good name, I will formally come out and say that my previous article reporting him as labeling the Sergey Kovalev-Andre Ward decision a ‘screw up’ was untrue. It apparently derived from a fictitious Twitter account made in his name. For this I sincerely apologize to Robert Byrd himself as well as all of our readers.

Oddly enough, this wasn’t exactly an instance of just running with a social media story as soon as it unfolded. I had actually looked into the account in question and it was a conversation with a reputable boxing writer on there that convinced me that the account was indeed authentic. That was my mistake and my mistake alone, so I am formally retracting that story.

Hopefully there is no harm done to Byrd as there was no intent to falsely attribute that statement to him. The Kovalev-Ward fight has enough legitimate controversy without needing to manufacture any more.