What if three of the six win one fight each?

Kessler moves on due to the extra point he got due to Frochy's horizontal positioning.

Now wait, that's no good... Well, I think someone has to score a KO then, or they are in big trouble.

It think there's a possibility of your hole in the scoring system, but in the end, it might have a minimal chance of happening, since in 9 fights the possibility of 3 fighters finishing with the same exact score is about 15-20%.

 

If this were to happen I think that Froch & Dirrell would go through, as Dirrell would have a tie-breaker victory over Ward & Froch then has a tie-breaker victory over Dirrell. Ward's victory over Taylor would count the least in this instance as he would (assumedly) have lost all 3 of his fights.

 

I believe they have a system for working it out.

 

:think Maybe the KO loss will make the difference?

Commentators wrongfully pointed out that Taylor wants to survive not to lose an extra point. But why would you lose an extra point if you get 0 for a loss anyway? So, it was either a stupid mistake - or KO losses make the difference. So I think you nailed it.

 

But your example said that Dirrell beat Ward, not the other way round as you've just put. If Ward beats Dirrell AND Taylor then he would have 4 points not 2 and Dirrell would have zero, so which is it?

 

Even smaller chance of happening. But still can happen. There are 9 fights which means 9 wins and 9 losses, uneven number which minimizes the chance of finishing with the same score. I didn't hear about -1 for a KO loss, but maybe it will only matter if they will have the same scores, so no point deductions, just a note who lost how.

 

Yeah, you're right Ramón... but writers like Rafael pointed out that all angles, details and possibilities are covered in the contracts. And since the point system is one of the cornerstones of the whole thing, I think they already worked this issue out.

 

I don't really think it's that unfair. In the example you've given it would be slightly unfortunate for Ward that his only points would come against the statistically weakest fighter in the tournament, but at the same time you could argue strongly that if Dirrell & Froch had been given the opportunity to fight Taylor they would also have beaten him as well which would cancel out Ward's victory. Dirrell's victory over Ward would have to be ranked higher than Ward beating Taylor, which means that Froch's victory over Dirrell would then have to rank higher again.

It's a pretty standard way of sorting out a tie-break to only take into account the results against the people/teams involved but it's just unfortunate that with the way the tournament is set up it can seem slightly imbalanced. The only way they could've got round it would be to have everybody fight each other once to cover all eventualities but doing that would mean a tournament lasting nearer 3-4 years than the 18 months or so it will now.