We've seen a little bit of instant replay used in boxing. I'd say it's been a mixed blessing. This content is protected In other sports it has been blamed for slowing the pace and causing more contests to be decided by officiating. But the potential is there for it to do good. So, are you in favor of instant replay in boxing?
Yes, I'm very much in favor of that. I've seen many bad calls in fights while usually the b-side gets screwed over bigtime.
I suppose, my question is what is the replay official going to do that three judges and a ref plus the commission aren't doing now? My worry is that when a major upset happens, the prospect is knocked out, that the replay official then goes back through the round and tries to find any head clash or low blow to blame it on. Turn the whole thing into a no decision or an RTD at least to get the KO off the record. Every time we give them a chance to revise a bad decision, we also provide "degrees of freedom" to create even more corruption.
What I've seen it used for is punch vs head butt for causing a cut (the link shows an example where they spent almost an hour looking at the replay and got it wrong IMO), body shot vs low blow when someone drops and can't get up, and KD vs slip (see if a punch landed or if the feet got tangled). Like everything else, every combination of commission, sanctioning body, promoter, and network will have their own system and their own rules.
I don't think the replay would be used to rescore a fight or rescore rounds. That wouldn't be good. I do think replay being used to decide if something was a knockdown or a slip or whether a cup was caused by a punch or a butt is useful.
I cant think of one negative Dded bonus that the promoters fixing fights won’t like it. Instant replay & open scoring would help boxing greatly.
maybe have instant replay for the judges only after ref makes the ruling at the end of rounds as accurate scoring aid. Never break the action for instant replay like the NFL does this way A-$ides & corrupt refs can’t exploit.