Veteran Luis Pabon Will Referee Usyk-Johsua Rematch

Coming up Saturday night in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua will tangle, again for the unified heavyweight title and a veteran referee will be officiating when they do. Puerto Rico’s Luis Pabon, who is no stranger to Joshua title fights and other big time title bouts was approved by the WBA/IBF and WBO to be with the fighters for their rematch.

Pabon has had recent experience in a big time title fight, as he worked in April Gennady Golovkin’s eighth round TKO in Japan over Ryota Murata to capture the WBA world middleweight title.

And, the 56 year old Pabon does have fairly recent heavyweight title work. This, as he coincidentally was also the referee in December of 2019, when Joshua got his belts back from Andy Ruiz in a 12 round decision and also, in Saudi Arabia. Pabon has not worked an Usyk fight in his career.

Pabon has primarily worked in his native Puerto Rico regularly, but will work some in the U.S., as well. This includes him having officiated David Morrell’s 5th round TKO win (photo top) over Kalvin Henderson on the Premier Boxing Champions/Showtime card in Minneapolis, Minnesota back in early June.

And, the well traveled Pabon, had previously worked the Sergey Kovalev Anthony Yarde WBO Light Heavyweight Title fight in Russia in August 2019 and stopped the fight when Kovalev scored a 10th round knock down of Yarde.

The world organizations and the fighters agreed on the three judges that will score Usyk-Joshua and they are all championship veterans: ​​​​​ Steve Gray of England, Viktor Fesechko of Ukraine and the neutral judge will be American Glenn Feldman.

Fesechko did work the previous Usyk-Joshua bout at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium scoring the first bout 117-112 for Usyk’s unanimous decision win back last September.

The Brit Gray and the American Feldman were two of the judges in the Joshua 2019 win over Ruiz scoring the bout 119-109 and 118-110 for the Englishman’s easy win that night.