Why were there more "draw" fights in the past?

One word, politics.

Controversial decisions often resulted in unrest.

If a fight ended in a draw, the gamblers all kept their money.

This made it very tempting for officials to render a draw in a close fight.

 

Why did they make it pretty much impossible for a football game to end in a tie these days? There’s a sense that fans are cheated if they leave an arena or stadium without a winner. Where in the past fighters or football coaches might not love a draw or a tie but they were generally satisfied not to take a loss to the house, where fans were expected to simply be satisfied with a few hours of diversion regardless of fights’ outcomes. I know in boxing that shouldn’t impact scoring especially with separate cards, and I of course don’t have access to the scoring records of every fight, but I would wager there’s at least a subliminal push to not score rounds even.

 

On BoxRec, loads of the fights listed as draws are because of different newspapers scoring fights for different fighters. 10-10 rounds were also more common and scoring wasn't as streamlined as it is today with the 10-point must system. Politics also plays a role, of course.

 

Only in cup games. In the league there's been no change to the rules.

 

You can now (on the relatively low number of fights that even offer odds — and odds on a draw are pretty long for a good return if you hit it) but I’m not sure you could in Dempsey’s day when your friendly neighborhood bookie was taking the action. And I would assume not in the newspaper decision days (if so, the bet would have to stipulate which newspaper … nobody could collect papers from around the country or even state/region to tally them up to know).

I think the earlier explanation of having the ref be the sole arbiter, and him not even scoring by round so much as general impression of which guy got the better of it, covers most of your question (and the Argentina draws are their own distinct thing due to a particular scoring rule that made it probably the most likely outcome of any fight that went the distance, especially ones scheduled for fewer rounds).

Another rule change made it much more likely for us to have technical draws in the more modern era — today a fight halted after a few rounds (I think the exact number may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction due to differing state rules) due to an accidental butt is automatically a technical draw — there was a time when it was a TKO stoppage on cuts regardless of whether it was caused by a butt or a punch. I’d wager there have been more technical draws in the last 40 years than from 1900-39.

You’ve looked into this and I haven’t, but I gather that we see more title fights end in draws this century than we did starting around the 1920s. My unresearched impression is that they pretty much assured there would be a winner (and not just one ref deciding it without scoring). I wonder what that ratio of then vs now would look like.

 

Young Farrell, a California fighter who was active during the 1910s and 1920s, had a total of 96 draws.

- Chuck Johnston

 

The era of 4 and 6 round fights in states like California produced a lot of draws since the bouts were very often too short to render a conclusive result. Also, they resulted in unexpected outcomes, i. e., Willie Meehan's decision victories over Jack Dempsey.

 

I read somewhere, especially Argentina if a result depended on a knockout for example it resulted in a draw. One the is I’ve thought. 12 rounds should have more draws. Even number. 15 rounds should have less. Odd number.

 

I understand that you can, but I woudl imagine that woudl be a fairly rare bet.