Scoring methodology

I suppose that would be frustrating. Although personally i'd find that less controversial than the bias we witness in judges giving even rounds to one boxer over the other. If a round is so close that we officially accept two separate judges' scores who score it 10-9 and 9-10, then shouldn't it be equally acceptable, if not more acceptable, to have scored it 10-10 instead?

Ultimately, there should exist a happy medium where judges are no longer discouraged to score rounds 10-10, but are also not encouraged to go overboard with 10-10 rounds.

 

I don't think that's a problem with the scoring. I think that's the problem with how judges are selected. Judges should exist as a truly independent body, which IN THEORY they are, but in reality, obviously not. Judges also should not be from the hometown/region of either fighter.

 

It’s called the Goldilocks approach.

“This porridge is too hot. This porridge is too cold. This porridge is juuuussstttt right.’

Good luck with that.

You seem to think, however, that two qualified judges could not reasonably disagree on how a round should be scored and each give a round (especially a close one) to a different fighter.

You do realize they’re watching from different vantage points and cannot score what they cannot see, right? If Fighter A has his back to Judge 1 and Fighter B throws a jab, the judge may not be able to see whether it lands. But the other two judges on different sides of the ring would have clear views to that punch. Repeat that over and over for an entire round. What Judge 1 sees is going to differ somewhat from what Judge 2 sees and Judge 3 is going to see something different from either of them.

There’s also a degree of what a judge likes or values more — Fighter A might land more punches but they’re not hard, while Fighter B lands fewer but they’re more impactful. You might favor the volume of Fighter A and I might favor the power of Fighter B’s blows.

I mean, we see this play out on the live scoring threads literally every week here. People simply do not agree. It’s a subjective sport to judge (unless there’s a KO) and that will always mean people will disagree.

The 10 even rounds I mentioned in a 15-round fight actually happened by the way: Angelo Poletti scored 10 of 15 rounds even in Roberto Duran-Ray Leonard I. There was an uproar over it.

Today people are looking at one fight and going ‘well just score rounds even,’ but if that happened it wouldn’t be long before some judge turned in a 12-round scoreboard with nine or 10 even and people would be up in arms about that.

The job of a judge is to decide who won each round. If they cannot split hairs well enough to find an edge in the vast majority of rounds, I’d argue they’re unqualified. They can’t just throw up their hands and not score close rounds.

 

I score rounds even all the time, I scored the 1st round of Haney Loma even as I thought neither man did enough to actually win it. Think about it, if a round is so close you are having a hard time deciding who won the round it probably was an even round.

 

Totally agree about the subjectivity of scoring a fight, we've both seen fights where fighter A is outboxing fighter B in a round by a fairly wide margin when with 20 seconds to go in the round fighter B lands a crushing right that wobbles A and he lands a few more good hooks before the bell. Who won the round ? A ,? who outlanded his opponent by a 2 to 1 margin and was in total command for 2 and a half minutes of the round, or B who sent him wobbling back to his corner? Personally I pick B.

 

And so forcing judges to NOT potentially score rounds as ties is unfairly removing the full spectrum of subjectivity. If you believe two boxers put forth equal efforts but you're encouraged NOT to score 10-10, then you're not allowed to be subjective in this case. You must insert some bias to give one a 10 and the other a 9 in this scenario.

But you are precluding the possibility that two fighters could have performed equally well in a round. Extending that logic, why would it be fair that a fight can end in a draw, but a round cannot?

 

No one is pressured to NEVER score rounds even. But they are asked with picking a winner in each round where possible. Judges score rounds even all the time. But if a judge just throws up his hands on every close round and ends up routinely scoring all close rounds even then he or she is not really doing their job by trying to be discerning.

You’re way overcomplicating this.

 

The easiest “fix” is more 10-10 rounds, more draws isn’t a bad thing. Haney vs Loma should have been a draw, nothing was decided in that fight, neither guy separated from the other, and they should fight again or accept their draw. Same with GGG vs Canelo…loved the draw in that fight because there was nothing definitive about it. That’s just my personal opinion, if neither fighter has an advantage or any significant progress, it should be 10–10.