Poor judging once again marred another night of great fights.

Nah, the scorecards weren't that bad in the Hurd fight. Body shots count and Hurd landed more than enough to earn up to handful of rounds, though not any more. 116-111 was a perfectly acceptable card, and 115-112 was within the realm of possibility.

As for Korobov, he did himself no favors by fighting in spurts in several of the early rounds, and by gassing completely in the final three frames. I called it for Korobov, too...But he made it a lot more competitive and close than it had any right to be.

 

Koborov lost the fight in the last two rounds. He was sucking wind.

Can’t blame him, 36 and inactive. Feel for him

 

According to the majority of the judges, Korobov and Hurd won the same number of rounds.

That's utterly insane to me.

 

Baloney, he dominated the first 7 rounds.

 

This. I had no complaints with the scorecards.

 

It's only perplexing if you're judging these idiots by our own values.
have I lost the plot here?how can someone lose the fight in the last few rounds if the guy dominated the first seven rounds?
Can't believe we have folk making excuses for this BS.

 

Aleem pretty clearly on the last three on my card, limited Korobov to only one really clean right hand in the fifth while outworking him and was competitive in a couple of the other rounds due to Korobov fighting in spurts. 96-94 Korobov in a fight where Korobov clearly controlled the narrative of the fight but gave away enough rounds to make it close. And since every round is scored in a vacuum, that will sometimes happen.

As for Hurd, he came back well in the 3rd and closed strong, clearly won the 5th, I had him shading one or two others. There were a couple of other rounds where Hurd scored well to the body, as well. I scored three for Hurd, personally and I don't feel one sliver of remorse about that. I could easily see another swinging to Hurd due to persistent body work, which sometimes offset J-Rock's flush but sometimes less frequent shots to the head. Another round beyond that...maybe stretching it but some judges like quantity and aggression. Whatevs.

Anyway, two judges were two full rounds away from scoring this fight the wrong way and only one round away from what I think was an entirely acceptable card. Hardly perplexing to me.

 

I didn't watch the Korobov fight, there was a lot of sport on and I just cherry picked the Hurd fight.

I was worried about a robbery given that this is boxing, but I had J Rock so far ahead that I doubted they could get away with it. Two of the cards were too lose, the third I thought was ok. As Drew says, there were a couple of rounds where Hurds aggression and meatier shots could've reasonably have swayed the judges eye.

To me he kinda ticked the boxes on the 'got to take it away from the champ' scale where a draw would've netted him a loss, a close win equals a draw and an overwhelming win, as this was, gets you a narrower win on the cards than you deserve.

Still I don't let it spoil the memory of a great fight. Any bout where your opinion of both fighters is raised at the final bell is a good one, to see each man win and lose with grace just made it all the better. Hurd may have been outboxed, but he won respect for his attitude afterward. Broner, take note.

 

Just watching this fight now, after 6 it's a shutout and you could even give Korobov a 10-8 in round 6. How they called that fight a draw is beyond me, but this is exactly the reason why this sport will never be popular again. Nobody wants to emotionally invest in a fighter, watch him clearly win a fight only for some pencil pushing geek at ringside to rob him of his victory.

 

There is no debate Korobov won the first 6 rounds, that's a victory right there in a 10 round fight.

 

The only problem there, Drew, is that even in the rounds where Hurd landed a statistically significant number of body blows, Williams landed about as many of them, of generally much higher quality, PLUS all the brutal head shots including those neck-jacking uppercuts.

It was a shutout, with MAYBE a round or two worth of budge room.

 

Hurd made up some ground, imo, in a couple of the middle rounds by increasing his volume in order to make more contact, to my eye, than Williams did. I know he's not particularly well liked among most of the RBR crew, but, aesthetics or no, he did enough to shade some of the rounds, imo.

As stated before, it's not the type of fight where I could truly be up in arms about a 116-111 scorecard. If you think otherwise, we;ll have to agree to disagree.

 

I think Korobov won the fight, too. I just think that by letting Aleem off the hook in the sixth and fading in the final third,he made the fight closer than it had to be and ultimately put him in position where he could be robbed in the cards.