German commission (BDB) changes result of female world championship Hammer vs. Mathis to “no contest”

President Thomas Pütz: “We all make mistakes – but we got to do our best to correct them.”

The German boxing commission (Bund Deutscher Berufsboxer – BDB) officially changed the result of last Saturday’s female world championship between Christina Hammer and Anne Sophie Mathis to a “no contest”. By doing so the BDB followed the ruling of the World Boxing Federation (WBF) which already announced that change yesterday. The World Boxing Organization (WBO) still has to decide about the result.

The reason for the decision: In the fifth round of their WBO-/WBF Junior Middleweight Championship bout Christina Hammer blocked Mathis’ left arm in a clinch. Referee Manfred Küchler didn’t stop the action so Mathis continuously hit Hammer with her free right arm to the left side of her head. Hammer went down from those punches and couldn’t continue.

However, instead of declaring Mathis the winner by KO, referee Küchler disqualified the Frenchwoman for alleged rabbit punches. Later on Hammer said that she was knocked out by elbow shots. The slowmotion clearly showed that there were no illegal punches at all but that Hammer was fouling instead by holding Mathis’ left arm and still got knocked out.

“The BDB is very sorry for this bad decision”, says President Thomas Pütz. “Because it was a world title fight it was not completely under our jurisdiction. Still the referee Manfred Küchler is a BDB referee and we apologize on his behalf. This was clearly no attempt to cheat on Anne Sophie Mathis and her team but just a wrong judgement in the heat of the fight. We all make mistakes – but we got to do our best to correct them. There will be an investigation of the events and a hearing of Manfred Küchler before we decide if he will be suspended. But there is no question that the result of a DQ victory for Hammer has to be changed to a ‘no contest’. This way Anne Sophie Mathis keeps her world champion title and the promoters can negotiation a rematch which would definitely make sense from our side.”