The Phenomenon Of The Terrible First Round-Does It Lead To Bad Judging Of The Match?

In my personal opinion I think the way a first round plays out can a effect the way the entire match is perceived in the eyes of the fans and judges alike. When you see a fighter especially a popular one get badly hurt in the first round when no one expected it that changes the tenor of the match, it effects our mindset because it makes us think that every shot that's landing on the hurt fighter for the next few rounds will be the shot that puts him down and gets him out of there. We are anticipating the fighter will be stopped in some fashion, so therefore it changes the way we perceive it and clouds our judgment when scoring. But the reality is many times the hurt fighter wins the second or third or fourth rounds usually all close but are not given credit for it, because we're not seeing the fight as clearly as we should. We give the fighter far too much credit in the ensuing rounds sometimes far more than he deserves.

A few examples Froch-Groves 1 the fact that Groves this "nobody" to most non British fans dropped the iron chinned Froch, that shocked most fans to their core and even the British commentators, so it affected how the match played out to most fans especially in their minds. Everyone thought Froch who was put down by Groves straight right would surely go down from one of the multitude of follow up rights Groves landed in the subsequent rounds, so they all judged the majority of the match in Groves favor while he was dominating the early rounds, Froch started doing much better in the middle rounds, possibly stealing a few half way through and eventually won by controversial TKO. The match wasn't nearly as one sided as fans thought it was but that first round was hard to mentally overcome, their judgement was clouded.

Bradley-Provodnikov, Tim was hurt so badly in the first two rounds that caused everyone watching to sit in anticipation waiting for the eventual Knockout shot from Ruslan that would follow, yet it never came and all the while fans were waiting and in some cases hoping, they weren't seeing Bradley boxing Ruslan's ears off while on the backfoot. It was a close fight but Timmy won it, but the first two rounds messed with everyone's heads. Granted the missed KD wouldn't have had an effect on the judges cards, so that was a bad call.

Algieri-Provodnikov, Algieri went down once from a huge shot to his eye and then took a knee to clear the cobwebs. So everyone thought it was only a matter of time before this unknown nobody gets put down for good, yet the follow up knockdown never came, but judgment was clouded and fans gave many of the following rounds to Ruslan that he did not deserve at all, an argument could be made that Algieri outworked him in the last 11 rounds and swept the scorecards but most fans thought it was far closer than it actually was.

Pascal-Gonzalez, Jean was hurt pretty badly from a few shots Yunieski landed on him in the first round almost out on his feet at times, but in the following round Jean kept his cool and was slipping many of Yunieski's shots by ducking low and catching the main impact either on the back of his neck or between his shoulder blades, those were not scoring shots, meanwhile in the exchanges Jean slipped many shots while landing the cleaner work, but the fans not seeing clearly because they thought Jean was done for, gave Yunieski many close rounds that he didn't fully deserve.

Pacquiao-Marquez the worst first round to end all bad first rounds. JMM was dropped 3 times, meanwhile he outboxed Manny for the remainder of the match but at least he got the Split Draw, because the judges didn't let the events of the first round hamper their perception of the fight all that much.


Do you agree or disagree that this happens frequently? Share your thought and examples.

 

That's the problem though most fans aren't clear headed and in the moment enough to not be effected by the one or two disastrous rounds.

 

:think

 

Pretty close to it. So :nutcase

 

6-4 I changed round 3 to Gonzalez after the fact, unlike official judges I have that luxury:deal