I noticed he never gave a solid score all night. Somewhere around 8/9? he makes it sound as if Tarver would need a KO to win. Tarver looks good in 11 and he starts calling it an even fight. Almost like he was tipped off on what the scores were going to be? :think
Where is Chuck Giampa? Thought he'd be scoring fights on Showtime now, He was gonna be a good analyst. It annoyed me a little, I like hearing scores during fights like that. If Giampa is done on there - then Ah, ****!
I didn't think much about it until at the very end he said it was an even fight after declaring it lopsided for Kayode all night. Almost like he was told to NOT give an exact score so they could correct it once they got real numbers. I doubt Showtime influenced the outcome because IB's RBR seemed to have that as the correct outcome. I do wonder if they knew they were going to get a 'preview' of the scores.
Does anyone that has access to the footage care to go back and track his comments about scoring? I think it would be interesting.
He never gave an actual score, I found that peculiar as well. I guess he felt alot of the early rounds were even or close, he kept saying things like "I might have him ahead, or I might have given him most of those early rounds. I had it 115 to 113 Kayode. I can see it being 115 to 113 Tarver though.
I don't think he said that those rounds might be even until VERY late in the fight. Initially he seemed to think it was all Kayode. Something changed his mind.
I erased it off of DVR but Ok. Maybe once Tarver looked like he might stop Kayode, Bernstein figured some of those rounds were close then when Tarver started winning he reasonably started saying it was an even fight. Or...... Tarver had his corner text Bernstein who is a sucker for Tarvers babyface haha.
He was rather vague when asked how he had the fight scored during the middle rounds. I assumed that he didn't want to bad mouth his co-worker Tarver by saying he had lost every round up until that point. Bernstien seems to be a sraight shooter I don't think he be a part of any fixes.
I'm not saying "fixes". I went to the RBR thread after and they seemed to think draw was the right outcome. I'm just wondering if they got results early that they shouldn't have gotten and knew ahead of time this would happen. TV cameras can 'snoop'.
They also didn't bother checking press row for their cards, which they have done in the past so I don't get it.
It was a little odd. I csn only guess that he was trying to. E particularly mindful of not favoring his colleague Tarver. He seemed to think Kayode was dominating the fight going into he late rounds and I certainly thought otherwise. I usually like Bernstein's analysis. I just didn't see it last night.
although not an exact science, compubox had the punches landed as being fairlly even though the more damaging blows were unequivocally landed by tarver. tarver had him hurt twice and i think kayode was lucky to escape with a draw.
It wasn't just the Tarver fight, he wouldn't commit all night. He was hedging even when the scores were clear.
