To all those who post how they scored a fight

It's actually impossible to accurately describe this.
I would say that a lot of people don't really understand what ring generalship means.
I see you're speaking of KovWard - there's no fathomable way it can be conceived that Kovalev-Ward was a robbery.
I think it takes an extra-imagination of assuming Kovalev landed 'harder shots' because he is the bigger puncher generally, when this isn't necessarily the case.
Illegal moves that the referee doesn't address, and are utilised effectively obviously,..will positively affect the scoring for the dirty fighter.

 

The whole issue is that 1) boxing scoring is inaccurate by design and 2) rules leave too much options for favorable scoring.

That's the reason why if the fight is close enough the home fighter almost always wins. History has shown time and time again that the guy that most people thought lost, wins in a big fight when he fights at home and/or is the bigger name.

Also even rounds should be scored much more in a could go either way round. Because there isn't really a clear winner in that round, so why would you give one fighter credit for something that didn't happen.

 

Boxing, is way to subjective when it come to scoring.

 

I remember the commentary team saying all the punches Ward lands can be negated by one big punch from Kovalev, it doesn't work like that. If that were the case then a light puncher would rarely win a boxing match against a big puncher.

 

We can only score the punches that we see, and what I saw were of no significant differences in impact in most punches that were landed. Kovalev dropped and wobbled Ward in the rounds that he won. He drew attention to the power of his punches and I feel that one thing people calling 'robbery' were doing in error is 'carrying forward' the impact of those punches into the other rounds when really, Kovalev may have won the 'fight' but not necessarily the 'match'. So on that token, I would suggest that like Mayweather-Cotto (as a more extreme example), Cotto landed the harder punches throughout the fight and quite honestly beat Mayweather up, but I had it 117-111 Mayweather.

Although Ward is on the back foot more often, Ward could've landed one or two more effective punches to win a particular round and backfoot/front foot styles don't necessarily determine scoring, but rather what was effective here is what matters. Nevertheless, what they did in the closest rounds I felt were completely nullified by eachother but as we know, we can't give 10-10 rounds. The main point would be my original point - it wasn't a robbery.

It's for that subjective reasoning that I say 'it could've gone either way' and refuse to have a solid scorecard that I can stand by. I go as far as to declare fights like these in history as 'Even' fights rather than a win or a loss as neither deserves it over the other. I do it with SRL-Hagler, DLH-Whitaker for example.

I think for this conversation to be of even greater value, we'd need to assess a chosen round from the Ward-Kovalev fight and give our takes on this to understand different scoring perceptions more accurately.

 

Those here who have watched ALOT of boxing and know how to score a fight and are not at all bias are an asset to the forum. Its especially interesting to see how other respected posters will score fights. In certain fights its also interesting to note down on your card those rounds that were close (could have gone either way). This then gives you an idea without being at all subjective, of the range of acceptable scores....

Far too often though we see corrupt judges, who will score a fight completely at odds with the plain cards. They will score a fight outside the acceptable range when taking into account rounds that could have gone either way. This does reek of brown envolopes and corruption, which is really far too common in the sport still today.

I think to address this we should have 5 judges and discount the 2 cards that are furthest away from the overall average. That would cost more money, but it would weed out a lot of corruption that goes on. Far too often we see one judge WAY WAY out of line with the other two.

 

Yeah he did land a throw more In the first half but by the end of the fight the numbers were similar which means Ward must have really threw and landed a lot in the second half. Especially when Kovalev was gassing and needed a second wind.

 

While I don't believe it's a weakness or sign of indecisiveness, we say "I could see it going the other way" because it's common for close rounds to be scored differently and we accept and respect others' opinions, I do like the idea of sticking with your decision. That doesn't mean I'll claim bias or robbery just because they didn't come to the same conclusion I did.

 

Well said. The sooner people accept that they aren't the ultimate authority, the better. There's 3 judges for a reason.