I've noticed that rounds are scored 10:10 less often than they used to be. The main question of this thread is "should 10:10 round scoring be TOTALLY banned"?
The problem with scoring 10-10 rounds is that if scoring them is okay, then what’s to stop a judge from scoring multiple rounds as 10-10 rounds? A judge could score 6 out of 12 rounds as 10-10 and use the incredibly weak excuse of “well I couldn’t split them” as justification. It’s terrible. The rigidity of the ten-point must system with every round being scored in favour of one boxer is why it works. 10-10 rounds are for people who aren’t good at scoring fights.
They should exist, but be seldom used, i.e. very, very sparingly. There are rare instances, after scrutinizing a round, where I've thought to myself that I just saw as perfect an example of a dead even stanza as could be (I wish I could summon those examples to mind right now). But there is almost always something by which to justifiably seperate fighters, so 10–10 rounds should not be used frequently/lazily.
Yes. Sometimes the rounds are really close and 10-10 is fair. People use close rounds to shade them to their current mancrush and justify strange scores. A fight could have 6 close rounds and 6 rounds where one fighter is clearly ahead. By having 10-10 rounds the guy that clearly won the 6 rounds wins the fight. By having a 10-9 must system Adelaide Byrd can score it a draw.* *Actually she'd give it to her crush du jour whatever TF happened in the ring but you get the idea.
Exactly yet you have so many people in the RBR threads scoring rounds 10-10. The judges never do it but somehow people have gotten it inside their head that it's common practice. It's not.
10:10 rounds used to exist, before the 10:9 system was used, and boxing was 15 rounds. 8-6-1 means that one boxer won 8 rounds, the other won 6 rounds, and one round was even (10:10).
That explains the inordinate amount of time it takes to get the cards when a fight hasn't gone well for the home fighter. They must be 'splitting the rounds'. They probably get instructions on how to do this in brown paper envelopes. Back to the question, I don't have a problem with even rounds. Sometimes that's exactly what's happened and I'd far rather the scores accounted for it than putting the pressure on the judges to award it to one of the fighters because there's an irrational prejudice against even rounds.
I think there should be a definitive ruling on it along with whether a KD makes a round 10-8 (and take additional points for additional KDs) and if you can award 10-8 without a KD. I have a theory that the more choices you give a judge, the more corrupt their cards will be. Perhaps even a Byrd couldn't score a round for an A side, but maybe they can call it even? But in a world with honest judges I think you'll get a better sport with even rounds, encourages chance taking and offense to really win a round. And boxing worked OK then! So perhaps there was something to 10-10 rounds.