Is this why so many people (wrongly) scored for Joe C/Devon A vs B-Hop/Kotelnik?

From The Ring magazine:



Did you ever wonder how Harold Lederman's scores can be so - well, stupid, exactly. Let's just call them wrong. Not always wrong, but wrong too much of the time. A trained pharmacist, clearly the man is no dumb-bell. Fans love him, and he seems like a truly nice guy. If only his scores matched his certitude. Though Harold can also get it right, sometimes he tells us two and two is three.

Describing how he arrives at his conclusions, Harold has on a few occasions revealed the source of the trouble, but I used to disregard these revelations, figuring he just misspoke somehow. Because how can a guy on national TV who's supposedly been hired for his scoring expertise not know the fundamentals of scoring? Well, he doesn't.

It was after he explained his lopsided, silly result for Devon Alexander over Andreas Kotelnik (puzzling the heck out of his colleagues Max Kellerman and Bob Papa) that I finally realized his words of explanation were the ones Harold intended.

He correctly noted the four scoring criteria: effective punching, effective aggression, ring generalship, and defense, though he listed them in the wrong order of importance. His key mistake is that, according to him, he uses all four criteria in each round. To judge properly, only if effective punching is an exact tie would you consider the second characteristic. If the second is also even, you look at the third, and so on.

When one fighter has outpunched the other, it's ridiculous to look at ring generalship, defense, or anything else. In most rounds, effective punching will determine the score, which is why Kellerman's method of deciding which fighter you would rather have been makes sense. It's good to be aggressive, to follow an intelligent strategy, and to put up good defense, but mainly you don't ever want to get outpunched. That's the key.

Harold might render a correct score because the effective puncher usually prevails in the other categories too, but not always. Even if he sees all the punches correctly, Harold could score a round for an aggressive strategist who slipped some punches but was basically ineffective.



Put simply, Lederman scored the Hopkins-Calzaghe fight for Calzaghe and the Alexander-Kotelnik fight for Alexander because he quite clearly placed far too much importance on who was forcing the fight, and disregarded the ultimate factor: who was landing the cleaner, more effective punches in each round.

If you score these two fights using the proper criteria, these were wins for Hopkins and Kotelnik. Here are my cards, unfortunately I only have accompanying notes for Hopkins-Calzaghe but you can see the scores for both.

I use the effective punching criteria as espoused by the writer of The Ring article above:


1.....hopkins 10, calzaghe 8

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, and

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similar to the KD punch not long after


2.....hopkins 10, calzaghe 9

could've been a 10-10, wouldn't argue with anyone who saw it that way, C forced action, H got off first a few times


3.....hopkins 10, calzaghe 9

competitive, but a hopkins round.

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4.....hopkins 10, calzaghe 10

could be a hopkins round, but settled on a draw. H lands a good straight right, but not enough in this one to give it to either


5.....hopkins 10, calzaghe 10

very even round.


6.....hopkins 10, calzaghe 9

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But

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, smothers C's attacks, C misses with a few flurries of punches


7.....hopkins 10, calzaghe 9

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. C comes forward a lot, his jab is not effective, punches don't land.

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after C's flurry misses at end of round


8.....hopkins 9, calzaghe 10

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. H fires back with straight right.

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close round but C edges it as

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9.....hopkins 9, calzaghe 10

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, H comes back with right hand. same as last round, could be a 10-10 but C just does a bit more here


10....hopkins 10, calzaghe 9

a clear H round.

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. despite C's aggression and output it is H that lands all the best shots


11....hopkins 9, calzaghe 10

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, although neither man lands many cleanly


12....hopkins 10, calzaghe 10

even. both flurry, no advantage gained



total..........hopkins 117, calzaghe 113

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:good

 

3 10-10 rounds


thats funny

 

I agree with your general point. Activity for the sake of activity ahould not be rewarded and both Hopkins and esp. Kotelnik won their fights.

Kinda like the first round of the Martinez-P Willy fight which Martinez one quite clearly

 

:bart

NO... Just NO...

Hopkins made me :tired in that fight... He did absolutely nothing to get the W, besides the KD + faking low blows...

 

Activity is normally rewarded because the other guy isn't stopping the other guy from being way too active.

 

Calzaghe beat hopkins get over it.

 

I agree with you on certain points but some times you have to consider the other factors when judging a round. If all boxers followed this procedure we'd end up with about 20 punches being thrown per round. Sometimes you have to give credit to someone who is forcing the fight depending on how successful they are

 

which is why i hope judges now apply for the 10-10 round. if you do the same as your opponant then you can just hustle a few rounds and win the fight even though you threw only 20 punches more.

we shoulnt award somone for just throwing punches for throwing sake. if he is pressurign somebody and they cant get off then it's a different matter. calzaghe swamped and fiented hopkins out of position. devon just did ray leonard gimics without landing enough. kotelnik....kotelnik'd it. because he wasnt phased or out of position he was landing crisper punches without any theatrics.

also on the flip side to the we should reward fighters with higher output. no boxer should be in range enough to be in a positon where they can be outpunched. he countered and his defence was solid. accuracy, defence and ring generalship should all be rewarded to kotelnik.

 

The scoring method is outdated anyway.
So many boxers nowadays have all kinds of tricks to "steal rounds" like they call it.
A round you edge, is worth just as much as a round you school your opponent... Only if you dominate you (mostly) get a 10-8 round.
A guy who's left swirling on his feet, having "pizzaface" as the Klits call it, can actually edge out a decision, based on nearly won rounds early in the fight while the other guy took -let's say- the last 5 and looks like he can go 10 more.

I'm for a new scoring system. Maybe harder to understand, but most judges can't score correctly now anyway, so no chance there.

 

Hopkins was just a bit better than poor against calzaghe, in no way did he take that fight

 

hopkins did well against calzaghe, it was a very close fight imo. on fight night and admittingly after me and my mate shared a bottle of jack i had calzaghe by a large margin. on watching back the next day i think i had calzaghe by a point. hopkins is a spoiler and knows all the tricks, he wont win many points on the general fans card by real boxing fans can appreciate what he does

 

The difference is both Hopkins and Alexander were outlanded through the course of their respective fights. Alexander threw more and landed less than Kotelnik; Calzaghe threw more than Hopkins but also outlanded him.

 

:deal

Took the words right out of my mouth.

 

Yes, by Compubox scores, which are often wildly inaccurate and thoroughly bogus. Watching a wide variety of fights will teach you this. I'm sure the Compubox scores for Pavlik-Taylor II (I could be wrong here, can't recall which fight it was exactly, but it was a fight within the last couple of years) were noticeably waaaaay off.

Hopkins outlanded Calzaghe over the course of that fight in terms of hard, clean shots, Calzaghe outlanded Hopkins in terms of pitty-pat elbow-grazers that still merit an equal click of the Compubox keypads.

 

He was being generous to Hopkins on that card.