The 10-8 round conundrum

Nailed on 10-8. My problem with this form of scoring has always been the fact that many people need a knockdown to award a 10-8. For example, some people would have both the below as 10-9 rounds (both are Round 1 of two big unification fights at welter in the 80s).

Sugar Ray Leonard vs Thomas Hearns I | ON THIS DAY FREE FIGHT - YouTube


Donald Curry vs Milton McCrory | BLACK HISTORY MONTH FREE FIGHT - YouTube

Tommy starts well, taking ring centre and establishing the jab. Not a great deal happens but he edges the round, whereas Donald dominates from the outset, lands many clean/hurtful blows but there's no knockdown. Still, having Tommy/Don leading by the same margin just seems wrong to me.


By the way, I used round 6 of the Leonard-Hearns fight mainly due to the fact that, people seem to forget (or just don't know) but the scoring of that fights- and that round- caused a big stink at the time. The great Hugh McIlvanney even based his fight report around this.

 

What if the round isn't even remotely competitive, with one fighter landing at will and the other guy being unable to do anything, but the guy being beat on doesn't appear to be damaged? I'm thinking of something like the Holmes vs. Cobb fight.

 

That’s difficult. I’d tend to default to the current accepted scoring norms and say there wasn’t (at least off my memory) at 10-8 round in that fight … just a lot of one-sided 10-9 rounds. It’s a complete domination but he wasn’t hurting Cobb nor dissuading him from trying to plod ahead.

But it’s a good point.

 

I scored the fight about 20 years ago and had that a 10-8. Quite a famous punch that started it, often credited with the moment Camacho became the most boring fighter in boxing.

 

I tend to reward the guy for staying on his feet and making it 10 9 however I find it silly to score a round with a flash knockdown 10-8 that's close and a round with a beating that doesn't have a knock down 10 9.

 

To me, boxing scoring by rounds, 10-Whatever, is almost the same as The Electoral College in Presidential Elections. The alternative would be to just have a judge score the whole fight as a single entity, but then that might not even be as good as what we have in place now.

Personally, I do not score rounds as 10-8 unless there is a knockdown scored by the fighter who would have won the round 10-9 without the knockdown. If that fighter scores two knockdowns, I make it 10-7. If the round is even otherwise, with 1 flash knockdown, that really does not mean much, then I tend to go 10-9.

 

In rare cases, I’ll have it 10-8 without a KD or deduction

Mayweather-Gatti round 6 is one instance. I can’t really think of too many other examples. I may need to rewatch it but I remember thinking Trinidad-Mayorga may have had a 10-8 round in there without a KD.

 

And Door number 4 would involve scoring a lot more 10-10 rounds, which could also lead to decisions that more accurately reflect the action in the ring…

 

A good number of today's judges have a difficult enough time with basic 'winning' or 'even' round scoring.

So, I couldn't say I'm a fan of 'dominant round scoring' without an official knockdown having been registered.

Encouraging judges to be more liberal with their discretionary scoring of dominant rounds, without a knockdown, would yield an increase in controversial cards, I would wager.

I would also probably go as far as to suggest that the rules be changed, so that a 10-8 round cannot be scored at the judges discretion and only be given if an official knockdown is ruled by the Referee.

 

Like the 3-2-10 card one guy turned in for Leonard-Duran I? I mean, sure, there were 10 close rounds so why ask a professional boxing judge to differentiate.

And in gymnastics we can give everybody 10s.

The job of the judge is to determine, round by round, who won each. It doesn’t have to be a wide margin not to be even … a judge needs to use the four criteria on which boxing is judged to figure which had the edge. Rarely, I agree, there are truly even rounds. But if Fighter A lands four jabs and Fighter B lands one, and that’s all that happened in that round, then clearly Fighter A won the round even if not much happened — if you are a judge, you aren’t scoring that round against other rounds (that may not have even happened yet in that fight), your literally job is to differentiate.

This makes all rounds meaningful and all rounds count. If it takes two guys four rounds to warm up and a judge says, ‘I’ll just call those even due to lower punch output than we got later in the fight (which he cannot do since he doesn’t know what future rounds will look like)’ then he may as well say the 10th round is more important than the second. And that’s not how it goes, nor IMO how it should go.

If you consistently cannot pick a winner in rounds, go become a tax consultant or a carpenter because you’re clearly not qualified to be a judge if your best effort is, ‘Oh but they both did some nice things, what a good, competitive fight … oh, here’s my card, another 10-10.’

EDIT: Love the username. I only found out recently it came from the Monkees.

 

This is the only round I ever scored 10-6. It was when it originally happened and I was just testing my ability to score fights, but after all these years I still stick with it. Wondering what everyone else things (round 10, starts at 33:00.00):

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