Do the judges favour a boxer/ give more points if he is more aggressive boxing on the front foot etc?
Only if the aggressive fighter is either landing more volume and/or harder punches. For example, if a defensive boxer boxing on the backfoot lands 20 punches in round 1 and the offensive boxer lands 10 in that round, its hard to give the round to the offensive boxer unless he landed significantly bigger punches. In this case, the defensive boxer wins the round 10-9. However, if the defensive boxer landed 20 punches and the offensive fighter landed 18, then you can make a case for the offensive fighter to have won the round 10-9.
Depends on the judge also - some judges prefer to see the sweet science of hitting and not getting hit, so someone on the front foot without effective aggression might not fair well with that judge, whereas some prefer to see someone make the fight and might favour that style. I find the subjectivity in this somewhat similar to jabs vs power shots; some judges will favour clean power shots vs shoe-shining jab work and damage accrued - and that can get really interesting if someone is coming forward peppering the jab and landing scoring shots, but getting countered with hard power shots. Those types of encounter can be hard to score. Doing my own kind of scoring, if it's close, I always try to come back to who I felt was more effective in that round, and only that round - and that weighs in heavily on ring generalship and being on front or back foot - it has to be more effective than what the other guy is doing.
