Interview Dated January 2005

Referee Sammy Garza

Sammy "The Bull" Garza is a familiar face to Houston fight fans. He's officiated hundreds of bouts on both the amateur and professional level. Like the majority of those most intimately associated with the Houston Boxing Scene, he is motivated principally by a love of the sport. But like many of the fighters who toil in the city's archipelago of gyms, he is ready to step up in the magnitude of his endeavors, to realize a fuller potential of his craft.

HBS -How'd you first become involved in boxing?

SG - I started boxing when I was a youngster about ten or eleven years old and I fought off and on for about 13 years as an amateur and just stayed in it and then got hooked up with a couple of the commissioners there, Henry Villagomez and Joe Spudic and they asked me about coming back into boxing as an official and I said sure. I started officiating with the amateurs, Golden Gloves, Junior Olympics and so on and then I've done that for the last 12-13 years and then got into the pro circuit and been doing that for the last eight years.

HBS - So currently you do a little bit of both pro and amateur officiating?

SG - Yes.

HBS - What initially attracted you to boxing when you were young?

SG - Because football and basketball you've got to be real tall and here I am 5'5", couldn't play basketball, couldn't play football and boxing was more my sport. It's an individual sport so I really enjoyed it once I started.

HBS - And obviously you must have had a "bull-like" style.

SG - Pretty much. In fact I'm the only amateur to ever beat "Termite" Watkins in his career so I gave "Termite" Watkins his only loss.

HBS - What weight were you boxing?

SG - At that time it was a featherweight. I had started as a flyweight which is like 106, then went to bantam, then went to feather and went to lightweight and that's where I ended up stopping, at lightweight, because guys were getting much taller and much stronger.

HBS - What was you amateur record?

SG - 89 wins and roughly 25, 26 losses. Probably 15 to 20 knockouts. Never got into pro.

HBS - How do you become a referee?

SG - They ask you to begin at the amateur level and once you've started judging, timekeeping, a little bit of refereeing, and you've got 2-3 years behind you then you can apply for the pro circuit and then you start practice judging. When you're practice judging they look at your scorecards and the compare them with the pro judges and when you get to that level where your scores are equal to theirs and you're ready to get on the rotation they'll put you on the rotation then you'll start there.

HBS - But that's as a judge. But what about a referee?

SG - Same way. I started as a judge then I started refereeing in the amateurs and I did about three or four years of amateur refereeing, and then I advanced to become a pro referee here because at that time there was only three referees.

HBS - So you didn't have to take a class. Obviously there must be a rule book.

SG - The state of Texas has a set of rules that we go by. You watch these pro fights on TV, which is like HBO, Showtime, ESPN, and you look at the referees, how they move, where they're standing and what commands they give and it's just hands on experience.

HBS - Let's start with the amateurs. There's been some comment recently in particular from Termite Watkins with regard to the amateur scoring system on the Olympic level where they have five judges that all have to press a button and he was pritical of that, saying that it worked against American boxers and that it made them not want to throw combinations and that kind of thing. What are your thoughts on that?

SG - I kind of feel like Termite. When you're in a different country and your fighters go over therey they really have to push and be aggressive to actually win because we've got some pretty good fighters and every time we go to a different country it's always one sided. The other people always win and the scoring is the same thing. They say that the combinations and body shots don't count but in reality they do count. It just depends on the officials. Here in Houston we count every shot if it's a scoring blow. If it's hitting on the forearm and it's blocked we don't score it as a point but if he gets hit on the forehead, he gets hit on the body, the ribs or kidneys or so on, yes, those are scoring. Of course this is the local level here then you have the state and national level in the amateurs which is the level one, level two, level three, level four. Then you become an I.A.B.A. official An I.A.B.A. official is an international official that gets to go all over the world and that's a whole different level and they have a whole different level of thinking like Termite says. We give our boxers here a better chance of scoring and winning a bout than I.A.B.A. actually looks at it.

HBS - When you get to that level what do you think about that scoring system in which three of five judges have to press a button within one second of each other for a point to be scored?

SG - I don't agree with it because there's a time frame you have one second and it could have been a blow that got caught on the elbow and that could even score a point so I don't agree with the electronics. I like back to the old basic scoring where you see the punches, you score them, aggressive style. Of course when you talk to the I.A.B.A. officials they all like the electronic because they're on that level. You talk to the local officials they'd rather have the paper system. That's how we do it in pros also. We don't have electronic scoring in the pros.

HBS - There have been some comments from some people who suggest that boxers are losing their fundamental correctness and that they seem to be drifting away from the old ways of knowledge that used to be practiced by boxers. Do you see that?

SG - Yes I do see that to a certain degree because the old school are old trainers who were old, old boxers from way back and they know the fundamentals, they know the schools. Today you have a bunch of moms and dads that want to be coaches. They never had any experience in that ring coaching or having been a boxer before but yet they want to be trainers and that's where they lose the fundamentals of it because they don't even know the basics of it. I see a lot of that coming on more and more today.

HBS - Tell us a little bit about your career as a pro ref.

SG - As a pro ref I have not had the opportunity to go all over the world. I've stayed in Texas right now. I have not had the opportunity to be called on yet and hopefully that day will be coming when I get called on to do a big fight or I get to travel to a different state and see the difference in the rules in a different state and be able to apply those rules with the rules that I have learned from here in Texas.

HBS - Tell us about some of the biggest fights that you've reffed here.

SG - I did Juan Diaz and Rocky Juarez before they got the titles and those are probably the biggest ones that I've done here as far as Texas. But I've been on Showtime, HBO, Telemundo on Friday nights, and gotten some exposure there but as far as big, big names, I've done Dominick Guinn also so I've done some of the guys that are coming up in the rankings of the big shows now.

HBS - You mention Dominick Guinn let's talk about when you're reffing a heavyweight and you're only 5'5" and not that huge a guy, what's that like? Do you have any trouble getting in there and controlling those big guys and separating them?

SG - No I don't. First of all you lay down the rules when you go to the dressing room. You give them their rules and regulations and what they've got to do. When they get in the ring I tell them, "Hey, obey my commands at all times", because I can disqualify them. I don't have a problem doing that if they don't obey the commands. So far in the last eight years I really have not had any problems with the heavyweights and yes I've done many fights with guys who were 6'2", 6'3", and 245 pounds and they respect me and I respect them as far as giving them the instructions and them obeying the instructions I give them when I'm in the ring.

HBS - What are the basics of the rules in Texas?

SG - There is no standing eight count in the state of Texas. There is a mandatory eight count if a fighter goes down and we tell them if a fighter goes down the other fighter standing up has to go to a neutral corner. So that's one and the three knockdown rule is not in effect here in Texas. It's up to the discretion of the referee if he feels that the boxer's hurt whether it's one knockdown or five knockdowns. Also a fighter cannot be saved by the bell, not even in the last round. We let them know that very clearly because as soon as that bell rings, if that fighter happens to go down, that bell does not save him. We still give him that count. If he gets up within that 10-count the fight continues but we stop it at the end of the round and he goes back. Then we have the accidental injury. If an accidental injury occurs before the end of the fourth round, and the boxer cannot continue then it's a no contest. If it goes beyond the fourth round we've got a ten-point must system and we go to the scorecards after the fifth, sixth round if it cannot continue any longer.

HBS - Since you're in there are you able to enjoy the fight from a spectator's point of view at all or are you pretty much just focused on officiating?

SG - You're pretty much focused on officiating because you have a lot of responsibility, if a fighter gets cut, if a fighter gets knocked down, did he get hit with a blow, was it a slip, was it a low blow, so you have to really be focused when you're refereeing or even a judge, a judge has to really be focused on that fight because he's scoring on all those punches. If it's a low blow he's got to be watching that. If I don't see the low blow and it was a low blow he's got to see that also too. So it's very important for a judge and referee to be very, very focused on that fight. Now once you've done that fight and you're sitting in the audience then you can enjoy the next one because you don't have the responsibility of being a referee or a judge.

HBS - Tell us about a couple of the particularly rough fights that you've had to officiate.

SG - Really I haven't had too many rough ones. Out of the eight years that I've been refereeing I've maybe had two or three that have been rough. You give them a warning and a lot of boxers that's their way. They're going to see how much they can get away with, with an official before they get disqualified or they get a point taken away. As far as roughness I've never had any real roughness. I've had guys that, once you warn them for hitting a low blow or hitting with the elbow or something they keep doing to see how far they can get away with it.

HBS - You have a lot of fighters here that come up from Mexico obviously. What's it like officiating with them? Do they have a different view of the rules or do they have a different method of fighting? Some people might think maybe they're dirtier fighters.

SG - I've had the opportunity to do a lot of Mexican fighters and they're real good fighters because they've traveled so much coming out of Mexico to Texas and everywhere to fight they understand the rules when you give them to them. A lot of times I have to give it to them in Spanish and then in English also so they understand the rules when I give it to them and I have to say a lot of the Mexican fighters are real, real clean fighters. I haven't had any trouble with any of them really.

HBS - So you obviously have another job. What is it?

SG - I work with oil and gas in a refinery, engineering.

HBS - You have a love for this, an interest in boxing.

SG - Oh yeah. Like I said I've fought from when I was ten years old, up to when I was about 23 and yeah I love the sport and I really get into it and when I do it with the amateurs I enjoy judging and refereeing with the young kids because they're off the streets and not getting into trouble and it's an enjoyment to see these kids do that. And as little ones, growing up, you see them from amateur and then you see them develop to big open fighters to when they go to the national tournaments and then once they become in the nationals a lot of them turn pro and them you get to see them in the pros so it's a real enjoyment doing it.

HBS - Some people say boxing has gone downhill since the so-called glory days of say 30 years ago when Ali was in his prime and that kind of thing. What are your thoughts on that?

SG - No, not really. You've just got different eras of kids and different eras of boxers. You can go back to the thirties and the forties. You look at those boxers versus the fighters that were in the sixties and seventies and then the eighties and nineties. You're always going to have a different era, a different style of boxers as they come up through the rankings.

HBS - Would you like to see any uniformity in regulations for state to state, or for example there's been talk of regulating boxing on a federal level? Ali went and testified before Congress that there should be a national boxing commission to regulate the sport.

SG - Boxing has been this way for the last 30, 40 years, why change it? I think it ought to stay the same. Now I think maybe a little bit more regulation towards the boxers, how they get paid, as far as when a fighter decides to retire there ought to be some kind of funding for a retirement. Because the span for a boxer is not ten, 15, 20 years so he's got to be able to have something there when he decides to retire, some kind of little pension of some kind.