Former world-class referee Carlos Padilla, now 88 years old, admitted to giving Manny Pacquiao improper assistance in a 2000 super bantamweight bout against Nedal Hussein. Both Padilla and Pacquiao are from the Philippines. Hussein is from Australia. In a recent interview given to the WBC, Padilla boasted [shortly after the eighteen-minute mark of the video] that after Pacquiao was knocked down by Hussein, he gave Pacquiao precious extra seconds to recover his senses. Pacquiao legitimately beat the ten count, but after receiving the extra recovery time from Padilla, he went on to stop Hussein on cuts. Padilla's memory appeared to be sharp and he seemed to be in control of his faculties when he told the WBC interviewer, "In the seventh round, I think, Manny got knocked down... I am a Filipino and everybody watching the fight was a Filipino. So I prolonged the count. I knew how to do it. When he got up, I said, 'hey, are you KO?' and that prolonged the fight." Later in the fight, Padilla ordered a point to be deducted from Hussein's score due to pushing. Padilla also implied, but did not explicitly state, that he further assisted Pacquiao by ruling that Hussein was cut from a Pacquiao punch rather than by a butt. Because the fight was stopped due to cut caused by a punch, it became a TKO win for Pacquiao, whereas if it was ruled due to a butt, the scorecards would have been consulted.

Pacquiao went on to have a Hall of Fame career and make millions, while Hussein's career never recovered from the loss. Padilla never refereed another major bout.

In response to the growing controversy, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman issued the following statement on the WBC's website: "The World Boxing Council has established a special panel to review the situation about legendary referee Carlos Padilla with regards to some comments during an interview published by the WBC a few days ago. We have received a sensitive letter from Mr. Padilla´s daughter Suzy which is found in this release as she has addressed it to the boxing Community of the world. The letter is self-explanatory and I, as president of the WBC, as well as a human being who has known Mr. Padilla since I was 10 years old, I can certainly empathize with Suzy and the contents of her letter to the boxing community. I will personally follow the process in the meantime, The WBC will not make any further public comments."

The letter that the WBC referred to was also published by the WBC. In it, Padilla's daughter did not deny any wrongdoing, she merely asked for pity for her father on the basis of his age and the fact that he made the admissions in English, his second language. However, Padilla has lived in the United States for decades.