Can a boxing referee ignore the towel? The rules behind the Dan Garber controversy

A boxing referee can allow a contest to continue after a corner throws in the towel. In British professional boxing, the towel does not automatically end the fight.

That distinction came under scrutiny after referee Amy Pu allowed Dan Garber to continue against Adam Olaniyan at The O2 on Saturday, despite his corner signalling that they wanted the contest stopped.

Garber was subsequently knocked down again before the bout ended. The incident raises two separate questions: what power does a referee have, and when should that power be used?

What do the British boxing rules say?

Rule 3.43 of the British Boxing Board of Control’s published rules places responsibility for retiring a boxer with their manager or, in the manager’s absence, the chief second.

It then states: “An indication of retirement shall not be given while a round is in progress.”

The referee also has a duty to intervene. Under rule 3.34, they must stop a contest if they judge a boxer to be outclassed, unable to continue through injury or otherwise unable to box on.

Rule 3.33.2 requires a stoppage when a boxer gets up after a knockdown but cannot satisfy the referee that they can defend themselves.

Those provisions explain why a towel and a stoppage are not necessarily simultaneous. They do not establish whether an individual referee’s assessment was correct.

What happened in Dan Garber vs Adam Olaniyan?

Garber faced Olaniyan on the undercard of Daniel Dubois’ rematch victory over Fabio Wardley on 17 October.

After Garber went down in the second round, towels came into the ring from his corner. Garber indicated that he wanted to continue, while Olaniyan drew attention to the towels.

Pu moved a towel away with her foot and allowed the action to restart. Olaniyan then knocked Garber down again, another towel came in and the contest was stopped.

The Board’s official results record an Olaniyan victory by technical knockout in the second of four scheduled rounds.

Has a referee rejected a towel before?

A similar dispute followed Lewis Ritson’s defeat by Jeremias Ponce in Newcastle in June 2021.

Ritson’s corner threw in the towel after he was knocked down in the tenth round. Referee Steve Gray removed it and allowed the fight to continue.

Ponce dropped Ritson twice more before Gray stopped the contest, according to Sky Sports’ ringside report.

Ritson himself subsequently defended the decision. In a Boxing News guest column, he acknowledged that he had been hurt but thanked Gray for giving him an opportunity to recover.

That response illustrates the difficulty: a fighter can welcome another chance even when their corner believes the contest should end.

Why the Garber decision still needs explaining

The central concern is the punishment a boxer takes after their corner has decided they have seen enough.

A fighter’s willingness to carry on cannot, by itself, settle whether continuing is appropriate. Equally, the fact that another knockdown followed does not tell us everything the referee assessed at the earlier restart.

The useful next step would be an explanation of Pu’s assessment: what convinced her that Garber could continue, and how did she weigh his corner’s intervention?

The published regulations establish the framework. An explanation of that particular decision would allow the debate to address how it was applied.