Confused: Joshua won 2 out of 15 rounds!

I agree that the boxing has improved, though I had it down to the scores only being made public at the end of each round, rather than continuously.

As I've said, in Beijing we saw fighters running like **** as soon as they landed the first scoring shot. Awful stuff.

I'm in favour of the ten point system and no headgear, plus smaller gloves.

 

My fear with introducing a 10 point must system is that we will get something similar to the pro game where fighters throwing the greater volume and pushing the other man back, but not landing clean will get the win, and for me that's not what the technical aspect of boxing (and therefore the amateur game) is about. If they had different scoring criteria, eg. they tell judges to award it 10-9 to the fighter who landed the most clean shots, but ****ed off things like ring generalship, and 'effective aggression', then I'd be okay with it.

From what I hear medical evidence supports that head gear doesn't lessen the impact of blows on the brain, it merely protects a fighter from cuts and bruises. This can be useful in international tournaments where fighters only have a few days between fights and any major cut will end their tournament. However head gear presents a fighter with a larger target, it therefore helps fighter to land blows, and possibly has a negative effect in terms of how much trauma a fighters brain incurs. So I'm not overly convinced head gear is a positive for amateur boxing.

The scores not being available during the course of a round has definitely helped, as fighters no longer seem to be running as much at the end, but the change back to 3x3's has been a major improvement aswell. It's a more difficult distance to last stamina wise, and the runners are struggling to cope with that.

Smaller gloves ?, I'm sorry I can't agree there as that's something with is definitely likely to cause more trauma to a fighters brain, and I'd guess increase the amount of cuts and facial damage aswell, as fighters have smaller gloves to block shots with. This is amateur afterall, if you want to see these guys just go to war and land big hard shots round after round, then maybe it's best to wait till they've turned pro (which most of the good non Cubans will anyway).

I love a tear up even in the amateurs as much as anyway else, but I'm not sure I'd like the top level of it to be reduced to sluggers and brawlers. I've not problem with bob and weave Tyson style effective fighters in the am's, but I have a great fear if things changed of ineffective come forward brawlers winning fights on mere aggression.