Referee Benjy Esteves Jr. is The Wise Man of Boxing
By Robert Brizel, Real Combat Media Correspondent
New York, NY (March 12, 2013)– On July 30, 1992, an unknown referee named Benjy Esteves Jr. refereed three bouts at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, New Jersey. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Arturo Gatti, Junior Jones, Rayomnd Joval, Felix Trinidad, Buddy McGirt, Lou Del Valle, Fres Oquendo, Lawrence Clay Bey, Aaron Davis, Glenwood Brown, Nassem Hamed, Kevin Kelley, Shannon Briggs, Vince Phillips, Derrick Gainer, Kirk Johnson, Kendall Holt, Dominic Guinn, Michael Grant, Marco Antonio Barrera, Pernell Whitaker, Mitch Green, Nate Tubbs, Hector Camacho Jr., Ivan Robinson, Juan Manuel Lopez, Elio Rojas, Giovanni Lorenzo, Timor Ibragimov, Zab Judah, Vinny Maddalone, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Paulie Malignaggi, Oleg Maskaev, Joel Julio Antonio Margarito, Erik Morales, Andy Lee, Arthur Abraham and Rocky Martinez are but a few of the marquee names of fighters Esteves has refereed in the ring.
The journey of Benjy Esteves traces the history of the ring itself through the 1990’s, 2000’s, and beyond in the northeastern United States. Perhaps his first important bout of consequence was when he refereed Bernard Hopkins 12 round decision win over Antonio Tarver for the IBO Light Heavyweight title in Atlantic City on June 10, 2006, a bout which rejuvenated the career of Hopkins-still the champion today.
Benjy’s second important bout of consequence came when he refereed Miguel Cotto’s 12 round decision win over Shane Mosley at Madison Square Garden in new York City on November 10, 2007.
Benjy’s third important bout refereed was Bernard Hopkins win over Kelly Pavlik over 12 rounds on October 18, 2008.
Other important bouts refereed by Benji include featherweight championship bouts involveing Yurorkis Gamboa and Juan Manuel Lopez
The first two times time I saw Benjy Esteves Jr. referee live as a reporter came on April 25, 2008, at Utopia Paradise Theatre in the Bronx, when Audrey Tsurkan
and then on August 6, 2008, when he refereed featherweight Dat Nguyen’s majority six round decision win over Juan Cruz at BB King Blues Club & Grill. He also refereed the walkout bout that night, welterweight Randall Bailey’s first round knockout over Dairo Escalas.
Usually found in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania or Delaware in the Northeastern corridor, Benjy has traveled as far as the Dominican Republic and Germany to referee important bouts.
Benjy has refereed title bouts involving USA New York State, Inter-Citiental International, USBA, USNBC, CABOFE, Fedelatin, NABA, NABF, NABO, IWBF, WBC, WBO, IBF, WBF, WBU and IBO, including both world and super world title bouts.
Perhaps Benjy’s most difficult moment came in one of two bouts he refereed at the Blue Horizon in Philadelphia on November 20, 2009, when he stopped a USBA Super Bantamweight title bout between Teon Kennedy and Francisco Rodriguez late in the tenth round of the scheduled 12 rounder. Rodriguez subsequently collapsed in his own corner in the ring, underwent emergency brain surgery and died.
Teon Kennedy did retain his USBA title three times more, but he was never the same fighter, losing, drawing, and losing in his last three bouts in 2011 and 2012.
Benjy has refereed many bouts since then, the experience serving as a reminder of the dark side of boxing, when the referee and the ringside doctors do everything right, but yet in life things still go wrong.
Watching Benjy referee the ESPN2 main event at Resorts Casino in Atlantic City between light welterweights Emmanuel Taylor and Victor Cayo from ringside from my Real Combat Media reporter’s seat this past weekend, I marveled at how Estevez had allowed what might have been a negative experience translate into the wisdom and experience of a positive experience. His experiences keep rolling. In late 2012, I watched Benjy at Resorts, refereeing the ten round red blood fest between middleweights Patrick Majewski and Latif Mundy, and handled the situation perfectly, round by round involving Majewski’s bloody cuts-without a hitch.
Benjy Estevez is today the wisest man in professional boxing, more mature than his years. In many respects, the referee is as much a survivor of the brutal ring wars as the fighters themselves, however the referee has his own unique way of learning and growing with each bout he referees, so the emphasis on safety can always be maintained at the highest levels.
In the world of self-reflection, the eyes of referee Benjy Esteves Jr. tell the story.
Some referees do not recover emotionally from a bad hit, like the emotional fall of the late referee Richard Greene after he refereed the Ray Mancini versus Deuk-Koo Kim lightweight title bout in Las Vegas in November 1982, a bout in which Kim died, and the dead fighter’s mother and the referee subsequently took their own lives. It has been 30 years, and the death of Greene haunts the ring to this every day.
Benjy has been to the mountain and back, to the extent the professional boxing referee goes there, and lived to tell the story. I believe life has made him a better world class referee by virtue of his ring experiences. To the extent a referee critiques his own experiences in the ring I cannot say. Actions speak louder than words. Perhaps humility is the best lesson of all, if we all learn from our experiences.
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