If a boxer completely dominates a round but suffers a KD, how should the round be scored?

You guys are stuck on a semantic tangent which ultimately just distracts from the larger (and more important and edifying) issue here.

You're both kind of right and kind of wrong. Technically, yes, NoNeck is correct that point deductions are separate from the RBR scoring. That said, however, functionally DavidC77 is correct that in no way does that not amount to essentially the same thing as having a 10-9 round where the winner is deducted a point marked down as being a 9-9 round. There's no harm in expressing it that way, even if we all understand that per the letter of the rules the judges are supposed to mark it 10-9 and then (outside the column) subtract a point from the deducted fighter's total.

It doesn't matter.

What does matter here, and is the overarching salient point here, is that you can do that with point deductions for a foul. You can not do that for knockdowns. The point "lost" for being knocked down is never compulsory. The point deducted by the referee, is. Point deductions for a foul and knockdowns are treated differently, which is where I think a lot of fans get tripped up on the whole ten point must system. You can, for shortcut purposes, mark a round down as 9-9 if the winner of the round has a point deducted - but you may not score a round 9-9 because the fighter that won got knocked down. The protocol for deductions is compulsory loss of a point from the fighter committing the infraction (whether you're deducting it from the individual round or from the cumulative total outside the RBR columns, it truly doesn't make a lick of difference; it all boils down to being the same mathematically) - whereas the protocol for a knockdown is far more subjective and open-ended, with the only real compulsory factor being that somebody must get ten points for that round (unless there's a compulsory deduction from a ref for a foul).

 

For deductions from a foul you can do that, yes (although it's just a shorthand, and technically deductions should come at the very end)

For knockdowns you can not.

 

NoNeck's point is important, though, in that on the actual official scorecards it IS in fact ten-point must. I'll demonstrate:

In the first round, TweedleDee drops TweedleDum. In the next round, TweedleDee dominates but lands a flagrant intentional rabbit punch and is penalized. In round three, he continues dominating but just before the bell TweedleDee suffers a flash KD. Here is how that's all expressed on a professional judge's card:


.....TweedleDee.....TweedleDum....total
R1....10...................8.....................(10-8 Dee)
R2....10...................9......................(-1 for Dee, so 9-9, total now 19-17)
R3....9 (or 8)...........10....................(you can give Dum a 10-8 round for the knockdown, or credit Dee with dominating by "only' giving it to Dum 10-9...so total is now 28-27 Dee or 27 apiece, depending)

So you can think of round 2 as being "9-9" as something of a shortcut like I said, but in point of fact it actually is 10-9 (-1 from Dee, to be shaved off later).

You see, though, how the baseline score in each round (prior to calculating ref deductions for a foul) has somebody awarded ten points, no matter what? That is what is meant by ten point must.

I've now explained this all VERY thoroughly and politely. If you "cannot be bothered" to read and comprehend this explanation, and you then continue to disseminate ignorant misinformation to further obfuscate a subject many already find confusing, then I cannot be bothered to let you continue posting here.

 

Yeeeeeah...so long as you realize that property of the protocol for deductions (for a foul) isn't transitive, and cannot be applied to knockdowns...