There’s always something wrong with boxing. Even in what has been a banner year for the oft-maligned sport — with high-profile fights littered throughout the 2023 calendar — boxing still can’t stop giving itself black and blue and purple knots under its eyes.

The problem du jour is controversial referee stoppages that just about everyone watching — except for the referee — believes are happening too early.

On May 13, Ismael Barroso was on the losing end of a 9th-round TKO stoppage against Rolly Romero after veteran referee Tony Weeks waved off the fight. Barroso didn’t appear to be in danger of getting knocked out at the time. To make matters worse, Barroso was winning that WBA super lightweight title fight by points at the time Weeks stepped in, possibly on his way to a career-defining victory.

The latest victim of the early stoppage is Julian “J-Rock” Williams, a practicing Muslim and former light middleweight world champion who suffered a damaging loss not entirely at the hands of his opponent, but also at the hands of a referee.

On June 24, Williams was challenging for the interim WBC middleweight championship against Carlos Adames in Minneapolis, Minnesota. With a few seconds remaining in the 9th round of a scheduled 12-rounder, Williams was taking a flurry of punches for Adames. But even when it was clear Williams had withstood the onslaught and began firing back punches of his own, referee Mark Nelson wedged himself between the two fighters and called the whole thing off.

At that moment, Showtime boxing announcer Mauro Ranallo said, “For the second consecutive fight, the referee steals a headline,” making reference to the Romero-Barroso bout that also aired on the Showtime network.

The Adames-Williams ending didn’t garner quite as much attention and outrage from the media and public as the Romero-Barroso ending. In part because Romero is the most popular (and polarizing) of the four boxers in question, so more eyes were on his fight and more people wanted to see the trash-talking Romero lose; also in part because the bloodied Williams, unlike Barroso, was actually losing on the judges’ scorecards when he was denied the opportunity to continue. Nelson’s stoppage was bad, but experienced boxing journalists and longtime fans were calling Weeks’ stoppage perhaps the worst they’d ever seen.

Williams unloaded with his own outrage at the outcome. On Twitter the morning after the fight, he not only criticized the referee who stopped the fight, but also the judges who had him behind on the scorecards. “All I ever ask for was a fair shake and I didn’t get that last night,” Williams wrote.

An optimist could look at Williams’ situation, point out that a lot of people who watched the fight empathize and agree that he got robbed, and encourage him to keep his head up with hopes that things will ultimately work out for him.

But the pessimist — and if you’ve followed boxing long enough, you have good reason to be a pessimist — understands that this kind of loss can potentially do irreparable harm to Williams’ career.

Williams is 33 years old, which in a sport as physically punishing as boxing means he might not have a lot of time left in the ring. And he’s now lost three of his last four fights, with two of those losses on the record as knockout losses. One thing an accomplished boxer can’t afford to lose is their appeal, and any loss (even a controversial, disputed loss) can still sap a fighter’s appeal.

In May of 2019, when Williams defeated Jarrett Hurd for the WBA, IBF, and IBO light middleweight titles, it felt like just the beginning of big things for a rising star in the fight game. Williams’ emotional post-fight celebration, in which he praised Allah and sent shout-outs to Muslims around the world during Ramadan, endeared him to a lot of fans.

But stars come and go quickly in boxing. That championship victory four years ago turned out to be Williams’ last real notable victory. In his first title defense, in January 2020, he was legitimately stopped by Jeison Rosario in the 5th round. In his next fight, in October 2021, he lost a decision to Vladimir Hernandez. He won a decision over lightly-regarded Rolando Mansilla in November 2022, but then suffered the loss to Adames this past weekend.

As Williams gets older, and that one shining championship moment gets farther in the rearview, it will likely become harder for him to get big-money fights, to get title shots, to get fights against well-known opponents that could put him back on the path to getting another title shot. That was one thing about the Barroso stoppage that angered so many people in the boxing community; at 40 years old, Barroso might never have such a golden opportunity to win a world title and enjoy the financial rewards of being a champion as he did that night against Romero, and it was taken from him by a referee’s bad call. (Williams himself even commented on the Barroso controversy.) Williams is younger and a former champ, so he has more margin for error than Barroso, but the sentiment is the same. Fighters aren’t just putting their lives on the line when they step into the ring; they’re often putting their livelihoods in the hands of judges and referees.

At a time when boxing could be gaining ground with the coveted mainstream and casual fan base, these inexplicable stoppages once again put a dark cloud of incompetence and, even worse, accusations of corruption, over the sport that doesn’t need any more scandals.