Keeping score: Boxing judge, IBF executive Levi Martinez won big

Jun. 1—Like a lot of kids back in the 1950s, Levi Martinez would watch boxing on TV with his father.

Unlike most of those kids, young Levi would score those fights round by round.

"I didn't know anything about (the 10-point must scoring system)," Martinez said on Wednesday in a phone interview from Chicago, where he was attending the International Boxing Federation's annual convention. "But I'd get a piece of paper and say, 'OK, the guy in the white trunks won round one, the guy in the black trunks won round two.'

"After the fight, I'd just say, 'OK, I've got six rounds for the guy in the white trunks.'"

Many years later, his hobby became his calling.

Four years ago, Martinez retired as a boxing judge after a career that took him to 37 foreign countries and in which he judged more than 800 bouts.

That figure — 838, to be exact — is what's listed on boxrec.com, the sport's official record keeper. But Martinez, an Española native who has lived in Las Cruces since 1970, says the true number might be as high as 1,500.

Martinez, 70, a retired law enforcement officer, has judged 199 world title fights and has worked bouts involving some of the sport's biggest names: Roberto Duran, Roy Jones Jr., Canelo Alvarez and Manny Pacquiao, to name a few, as well as New Mexicans Johnny Tapia, Danny Romero and Holly Holm.

In 2019, Martinez stepped away from judging to become an IBF board member and event supervisor. Then, this week in Chicago, he was named the IBF's executive vice president.

His boyhood hobby didn't become more than that until the mid-1990s, when he approached Juan Nuñez — then a member of the New Mexico Athletic Commission — about becoming a trained and licensed judge.

Martinez began judging in New Mexico and the Rocky Mountain Southwest before getting assignments elsewhere. His first world title fight, and his first assignment overseas, was a January 1999 WBO middleweight title bout in Brandenburg, Germany, between Germany's Bert Schenk and the Bahamas' Freeman Barr.

Schenk won by fourth-round TKO, so Martinez's scorecard wasn't needed that night.

When they were, sometimes controversy ensued; such is the life of a boxing judge. Martinez sometimes has been on the "wrong" side of a split decision, scoring a bout in favor of one fighter when his two counterparts scored it the other way.

But it was being on the "right" side, scoring a July 2014 bout between Alvarez and Erislandy Lara 117-11 for Alvarez, that created by far the biggest kerfuffle in Martinez's career.

Alvarez won the bout by split decision, with the other two scorecards reading 115-113 for Alvarez and 115-113 for Lara. The wide margin on Martinez's card drew harsh criticism.

Lara called for Martinez to be investigated. "Is Levi Martinez a bad judge, or did he just have a bad night?" one boxing writer wanted to know.

On Wednesday, not in response to his Alvarez-Lara scorecard but about judging in general, Martinez said there's a reason there are three judges.

And just a couple of razor-close rounds scored one way and not the other, he said, can spell the difference between 115-113 and 117-111.

"When you're on one side of the ring, you see certain things," he said, "and the person across from you is seeing something else."

Oversight of IBF world title fights has been his job as a supervisor the past four years.

"There's paperwork that each fighter has to fill out," he said. "You're in charge of the gloves, you're in charge of the weigh-ins, you're in charge of the rules meetings."

Now as IBF executive vice president, Martinez said with a laugh, he's in charge of whatever IBF President Daryl J. Peoples puts him in charge of.

"So I'm wearing lots of hats," he said.

Of his career as a judge, he said — recalling those nights at home scoring fights with his dad in Española — he couldn't have asked for more.

"I've been very fortunate, very, very fortunate," he said. "I've been able to experience the dream of a lifetime."