How reliable are newspaper decisions and could promoters fix them?

Yes, a newspaperman could be paid off - as can judges. I really don't see how underhanded lobbying by promoters is any more of a risk in one system than another. Humans are humans, flawed all.

 

I'd wager, also, that back then as now, there are quite a few journos (and even just 'super-fans') whose boxing knowledge vastly exceeds that of many professional judges. There is very rudimentary training, but really they're not held up to as high a standard as you think. A good number of judges DKSAB. Like, not a bit.

 

note: I'm not defending the NWS format; in fact I think it was quite silly. Just bore mentioning the points above.

 

It depends on the news paper. Here's the answer, usually a news paper's description matches the film to a close enough level, so they can be reliable. Just throw out home town coverages, and certain writers being close to certain fighters.

I think a majority of news paper decisions ( 60% of the reads or scorecards ) is reliable, and good enough to sniff out bad official decisions.

 

You can probably get a pretty good idea what happened by comparing enough of them.

 

Its asinine to think promoters back then had enough money to go paying off every newspaper reporter in every town a fighter fought as often as those guys fought. Small towns of less than twenty thousand people often had 3 newspapers. How long do you think it would take the public to catch on that a reporter was on the take if he continually turned in minority reports as to how fights went? How long would he keep his job if this happened regularly? At one point during the ND era Pittsburgh had 8 newspapers. Cincinatti had at least four. Likewise Cleveland and likewise Buffalo. Syracuse had at least three. Philly had at at least 8. New York had dozens when count the local papers that often covered boxing. New Orleans had at least three. Again, do the math on how ridiculous it would be to assume all of these papers were on the take and that we simply cant trust a word in black and white. If you look at all of the sources you can typically come to a consensus of how a fight played out with very little controversy or deviation. Are there outliers, of course, but why would anyone throw the baby out with the bathwater because a small percentage of decisions were wrong. If thats tye case then modern boxing decisions might as well be ignored because they are far more often suspect than a consensus of newspaper decisions.

 

^^^^^^^ Schools in session

 

I agree 100 percent with Compton. When money or a favor might have exchanged hands between a promoter and a sports writer, it was usually promotional newspaper pieces the writer had written prior to a fight. According to fight manager George Chemeres, who I knew pretty well in his later years, when a show went over well in Seattle a certain local reporter would come around afterward looking to be reimbursed for pre-fight articles he had written. Nothing would surprise me about what might be happening now between promoters, managers, and modern-day media sources. Some of you probably have stories which you may or may not be at liberty to tell. Given the price of tickets these days, an extra freebie or two is a pretty good pay-off in itself.