how can people watch the same fight, using the same scoring criteria, and still come up with such contradictory score cards? i think part of it is how people score effective aggression. do you define effectiveness at fighter level, or fight level? if youre landing more punches but taking the worse damage, is it still effective? does a jab landed tell you the same thing about aggression as a left hook to the jaw? what say you?
Biases are a *****. Also different people value different aspects of boxing differently. And I hate to say it but different people have different mental capacities, meaning not everyone has the same conceptual grasp of what it is that they are actually seeing. Ect ect ect. From my experience though, the thing that accounts most for scoring variance is bias due to rooting for said fighter.
I feel like scoring is pretty simple..you watch and you score who does better. But I guess everyone feels that way and we still end up with massive differences. Bias plays a huge part and is understandable if it’s consistent. Meaning for a style and not for a fighter. Nothing is cut and dried though...will ten jabs win a round over 2 hard hooks? Usually I’d say yes, but if those hooks had a notable effect that changes it. Aggression that isn’t resulting in landed punches shouldn’t count for much however if the other guy isn’t landing either, I’d probably score the round for the guy trying, i.e being aggressive. However others would score it for the guy showing better defense. Effective defense? Whatever...these arguments will never cease. There’s just to many factors for there to ever be an overwhelming consensus. However, I really think that fights where all these factors make the winner of a fight truly controversial are relatively rare. That’s where fighter bias comes in. There’s definitely a correlation between a fighters popularity and the possibility of a scoring controversy. When it’s 2 guys buried in the undercard who haven’t developed rabid fanboys and haters it strangely seems there’s far less arguing over scoring criteria and who won a round or a fight. The guy who did better just wins.
Yes I'm biased, I can admit to that, but.... I also don't necessarily think that that has huge impact on how I score. I think what happens more often than not, is that I and several other posters are a little more aware of what many of the supposed no name opponents bring to the table. So we set our expectations accordingly, as in if the underdog is performing well, it doesn't take us three or four rounds to process what's happening. We're not shocked. Whereas, I hate to say this because it makes me sound obnoxious, but a lot of the people the show up on these are RBR's come in expecting to see a one-sided schooling by the hand of the a-side fighter, they reflexively in a groupthink like fashion go with the name fighter. The main reason is they show up expecting a blowout, and sometimes their mind incorrectly processes it as such, not to say they're stupid but merely preconditioned to view a fight in a certain light, and they shut their brains off and go with the herd. Also, if a fighter experiences a disastrous first round and gets dropped once or twice, that has a deleterious effect on how the spectator views the ensuing rounds. They're consciously expecting to see someone knocked out, it clouds their judgment so much that they miss the fact that the KO artist going full bore is getting countered or outworked by the guy that got dropped in the first round sometimes ironically it takes a few rounds for the viewers to shake off the effects of the knockdown, sometimes longer than the guy that was actually knocked down.,
Also, there are genuinely close fights with many rounds that are borderline impossible to split, so that's where the bias truly comes in to play. Sometimes it's as simple as that.
4 reasons. Idiocy, Inattention, Inclination, and Ideology. The scorer may be a fool, not paying close enough attention, have a preferred outcome, or favor a certain style. Alternatively the 5 Bs. Boob, Blind, Backing, Bias, and Byrd
i favor agressive fighters, this is the FIGHT game. i also place heart as the most important ingredient in a great fighter. i can admit that that might color my view of how it should be scored. what some people might view as using the ring, i might view as running, but i have the experience to make an informed determination of which is which.
People allow personal bias to effect their scorecards, might not be the fighters involved in can be simply a preference to a certain style. Some also simply don't know what they are watching. People often don't factor in the more subtle aspects of boxing they only register punches being thrown or connected. Ring generalship for example is often not fully understood or scored for, if in a close round where both land a similar number of punches but one guy controls the pace, where in the ring the fight is fought then they can win the round on ring generalship, but most ignore these things and only focus on the punching because they don't understand the skill and intelligence required to control the pace or where in the ring the fight is fought.
Because there are a lot of factors to scoring a fight, which can be misinterpreted or skewed depending on each individuals own personal biases.
The biggest problem is that most people have a lot of trouble deciphering what is landing and what is not and this is mostly caused by bias toward the guy they like or the guy who is supposed to win. Fury Wilder is a perfect example. Fury was the more accurate puncher of the 2 so it was more difficult to see where he was missing whereas with Wilder it was much easier to see his wide swings going astray. I remember Fury throwing a 4 punch combination and the commentator calling it "great work from Fury'' whereas all 4 punches were taken on the glove. Effective ''aggression'' is a misnomer. It suggests that to be effective you must also be aggressive which is not the case. It's simple, give the rd to the guy who has landed the most effective punches. Give it to the guy that has caused the most damage. All the other factors suchas ring generalship and defense will nearly always follow on from effective punches and are rarely used. It means a guy who has landed more punches but with little effect can be out scored by a guy who has landed less punches with greater effect. If it is hard to tell if a punch has landed then treat it that way and give more weight to the quality shots that are easy to see.
My own mother usually can see who's on top,it's not hard to score a fight imo.Bias is an excuse for ineptness imo.
Because the way boxing is scored is so vague by design. With four subjective criteria, any moderately close round can be scored either way. The powers that be in boxing have no desire to change this and make a 'cleaner' score system, because the current system allows them to make corrupt decisions. This also allows fans (or fanboys) with an agenda to score things how they like.
I think for the most part most fights people score correctly a lot of routine boxing matches one guy out boxes the other guy you know most fights aren't controversial but I think that in a close fight that's very competitive it's easy to see very different scorecards especially when you're at the fight and you're only viewing the fight from one vantage point with no instant replay or slow motion which is why a lot of times when I've gone to a fight and then watched it on my TV I had different scores we are always seeing threads pop up where the topic is fighter a throws a hundred punches and lands 20 and fighter b lands 20 punches but threw 50 who won the round I think last night's fight was a perfect example where Carol threw a lot of punches and he landed more punches and even in some exchanges farmer would land a really clean left or right hook but then Carroll would come back with three or four punches maybe none of them were as effective as the one punch that farmer landed but when you put all four of them together does that equate the one shot I just think the boxing criteria n General kind of leaves the possibility of seeing varied scorecards I mean sometimes it's hard to gauge how effective the punches are some people can't always determine what landed or what missed Obviously bias for one boxer or for a style can sway opinions but I think even without those biases the way the scoring system is made is always going to create variation in scorecards it's not as though boxing has a scoring criteria like most other sports with goals runs points
I'm not sure how you make it a cleaner scoring system given that the scoring is subjective by Design I feel like any Amendment to the way rounds are scored doesn't take out the subjective piece so even if you change the way the points are divvied out or you allow there to be half rounds or more even rounds or more 10-8 rounds you would still get bad decisions because at the end of the day it's not a clear-cut formula like another Sports
