Keeping a mental counter during the round, adding 0.5's or 1's to one or the other fighter, depending on how hard and clean the punch was, in my opinion. Several not very clean jabs can count for +0.5 or +1.0 for me if the opponent is not countering them. Adding some points for cleverness and/or effective defense too, if they impress me.
It's not just about punches thrown/landed. Punches landed is of course a barometer of what you're seeing, but it has to be taken within context of everything else that's going on. A good example was Duran-Leonard 1. I don't know punchstats on that, but I mentioned in the thread I posted in that it wouldn't have surprised me to know that Leonard landed roughly as many punches as Duran, but context is everything. Duran imposed his will and made Leonard react to him most of the time, meaning the "soul" of the fight belonged to him.
Who is doing more damage, who is dictating the pace of the fight, who is doing the cleaner work, who is landing more, who is demonstrating better command of the ring. In that order.
Generalship matters. As for Compustat garbage, breaking it down round by round is pretty important. Forget the fight long punch statistics. I was amazed when recently scoring Ali-Norton III. On a rounds basis, the five rounds Ken took were as decisive as possible, but I actually had Muhammad taking all ten closely contested rounds. Those are the only ten rounds anyone should focus on when scoring their rubber match. Those ten rounds are either scored 8-2 or 9-1 according to many surprised scorers who have watched it recently for the first time on YouTube. Norton needed three more conclusive rounds. Personally, I don't think Ken had the gas anymore at age 33 to pull it off. He peaked for Jerry Quarry, Garcia II, then started sliding. (I don't hold Zanon against him since Lorenzo was a master boxer who made everybody look horrible in any rounds where they failed to put him on the deck, a comebacking JQ, peak Holmes, Evangelista, who was pretty good at the European level and decisioned Snipes in Ohio.) As Jerry Quarry mused from ringside, Norton had to fight a heckuva lot better than he did against Middleton to beat Ali in Yankee Stadium. Ken didn't. And Norton-Bobick was just a wild career anomaly for Kenny.) Norton, a decently skilled boxer, remarkably never produced an impressive UD win over a world class opponent. (Ali I was obviously monumental, but an SD is actually an accurate reflection of how competitive Muhammad was. After Ali initially had his jaw fractured in round two, he didn't let Ken connect there again more than a few times, making the scoring a lot closer. To me, Norton aggravated that fracture late, but it was already cracked in the early going.) So far as Holmes-Norton, I agree with Arthur Mercante, Jr.'s live assessment that Larry took eight of the first ten stanzas. I also agree with UPI's live unofficial scoring that Duran took eight of the first ten rounds in Montreal. Steve Farhood had Michael Spinks the winner against Eddie Davis from ringside, but then had Eddie the winner of those 12 rounds when scoring it off the videotape at home.
You can't always have the same criteria for scoring fights it's situational. I do like the cleaner/harder more effective punches so if you've got two fighters trading punches and the other guy has slightly more workrate but the other guy is doing more damage or his punches are very eye catching I tend to favour the latter. But sometimes sheer workrate can get you the win in a competitive fight for example Dorsey threw so many punches vs Paez in their 1st fight its almost impossible not to give him the nod based on sheer aggression/workrate. Like I said it's situational and depends on what type of fight you're watching.
Sounds like you actually watched the fight instead of going with the preconceived narrative "Norton dominated lolz" Frazier and Futch, both stablemates of Norton who hated Ali immensely scored the fight a draw. The UPI also scored the bout for Ali 6-4-2 Norton also said it could've gone either way but was adamant he won the third bout. To be honest it was a bit like Ali-Lyle where Ali was in one of his lazy moods, not doing much of anything, rather than Norton being a complex puzzle for Ali. I actually thought Norton looked much better in their 2nd fight, even though he lost that one by his own admission.
[/QUOTE] I had Norton vs Ali 1 7-4-1 for Norton it was a clear win for Norton but not a domination no but Norton did win the last 2 rounds big as did Ali appear to be in some distress. I also don’t believe Ali broke his jaw as early as the 2nd round I think that's a bit of a myth.
