Most people are happy to score a fight based on landed punches, and give more for more powerful and hurtful punches – even if they aren’t often so keen-eyed to spot which shots landed, scored, and missed - but I do find that the other criteria: effective aggression, defence, and ring generalship are rather elusive and underappreciated by comparison. ‘Aggression’ tends to be given a lot of credit, even when it isn’t effective. The obvious interpretation of this term would be that pushing the fight and landing scores more than simply landing, but it has to be ‘effective’ – if you push the fight but fail to score you shouldn’t be given credit for it. Examples of this are Usyk-Chisora when many people scored the fight close or - apparently blindly – actually gave Chisora the nod. Chisora was definitely aggressive, but even in the early rounds he was landing very little in terms of scoring shots, hitting the arms or back or below the belt in most instances, and ultimately wasting much more energy than he was converting: but people, including the judges themselves, seemed to reward Chisora for this. Similarly in Fury-Parker, Parker was scored pretty widely when he landed almost nothing, simply for pushing the fight. Seems that ‘effective aggression’ simply means being entertaining in most people’s eyes. Defence implies that a fighter should be rewarded for moving, slipping, parrying and blocking shots – rather than the shots simply not being scored for the other fighter. There’s logic here for me – good defence means sapping the other fighter’s energy, alongside demonstrating superior skills. I’m not sure I’ve seen many examples of this actually being rewarded on a scorecard. Again, I think of Usyk-Chisora, and Fury-Parker. Fury undoubtably showed excellent defence in that fight, but seemed to actually be punished for this as it made the fight boring. Ring generalship is probably the hardest to identify, and I feel that the criterion should generally be reflected in the other criteria anyhow: a good general is one that consistently holds the more offensively and defensively sound position. Equally you could think of it as ‘making the other fighter fight your fight’. I do find it hard to score in isolation though as the better general will be the better offensive and/or defensive fighter which is easier to spot. I have to admit my general impression of these three criteria is that it clouds the objectivity of judging: they are vague and often may lead to contradictory scores. It also helps provide a smokescreen for corrupt judging. Likewise, I simply don’t see much evidence of them even being adhered to on professional scorecards. Still, how do you see it, and how do you wrestle with the scoring categories?
