I’m hoping we can find some neat head-scratchers here. Calling on @scartissue who is an expert at obscure scoring methodologies used in various places and times, to pull out some gems, but everyone is welcome. I’ll start us off: It’s two days before Thanksgiving 1974 at the coliseum in Seattle. Marvin Hagler has come from Massachusetts to face local Olympic hero Ray Seales, aka Sugar Ray Seales, over 10 rounds. At the end of those 10 rounds, they finish in a majority draw. One judge went for Marvin by two points in what looks like some pretty conventional scoring. The other two? Both had it 99-99. Now that means each judge gave each fighter one round with nine even. Out of 10. Let that sink in. Per the Associated Press, Seales outboxed Marvin early and Hagler came on late. I guess to these two judge, that meant this Sugar Ray won the first and Marvin won the 10th … and maybe they took a nap for the middle eight? There are judges in Argentina from this time period who would blush at this level of indecisiveness. What are some truly oddball scoring situations — and let’s avoid the one ‘Russian judge’ things like a single judge having an out-of-whack card different from the other two. I want more than ‘he wuz robbed’ here.
Rounds two and three in Czyz-Williams I. They were fairly similar rounds, but mirrored, with Williams winning most of the round but suffering a knockdown at the end of round two and the beginning of round three. Scores for round two (Czyz's points listed first): 10-9, 10-8, 10-10. Round three: 10-10, 10-9, 9-10 They couldn't agree on what it meant when Williams controlled a round but also got knocked down. Interestingly, in both rounds, Dalby Shirley gave Czyz a generous score, Mike Glienna was as generous to Williams as he could be (including having him win a round in which he got dropped), and Glen Hamada was right in the middle.
There are 3 that I find to be head-scratchers. 1) The first one is clearly to my own ignorance. I'm unclear on South African scoring back in the day. The second Bob Foster v Pierre Fourie fight had scores of 103-99, 101-98 and 103-95 for Foster, Now these are sort of in line with one another, so again, the issue is I don't understand it. Moreover, I saw the Fourie v Mike Quarry fight had scores of 67-66, etc. No fractionals in any of these rounds, so maybe it's something like a 6-4 for each round. But the issue here is I'm unclear on the tabulations 2) Now this isn't me. This is just way out there. Again, Bob Foster v Pierre Fourie, but the first one held in Albuquerque. One score of 149-138. OK, that's good. I heard it was a one-sided fight and that translates to 12-1-2 in rounds. But the next two are puzzling with a 149-130 and a whopping 148-120. WTF! A clean sweep would have only been 150-135, so a couple of judges must've really been employing a lot of 10-8's to get to those scores. 3) This is the ultimate in fence-sitting. The second fight between Rodolfo Gonzalez and Ishimatsu Suzuki. Through 11 rounds before the 12th round ending, the scores were 54-54 (1-1-9 in rounds), 53-53 (2-2-7 in rounds) and 55-54 for Gonzalez (a crazy 1-0-10 in rounds). Needless to say, all 3 officials were Japanese and they took fence-sitting to the max.
Some of Eubank Sr’s fights, Puerto Rican judges loved him. There’s no way he won nearly every round against Rocchigiani or every round against Lindell Holmes or pretty even after 10 with Watson in their rematch. No way at all
Fury vs Usyk I, 12th round. All judges scored it for Fury even tho Usyk outlanded him 2:1 and landed bigger shots.
This is so true, there must have been some sort of promoters influence on them, because this quote is so correct. Also Dalby Shirley always had crap scores, I always wondered what he was watching.
That 118 to 110 card for Canelo in the first ggg fight has got to be the most blatantly wrong and corrupt scorecard in boxing history
Joe Walcott vs Rex Layne had 7 drawn rounds with 2 rounds to Layen and 1 to Walcott, which is how Layne pulled off the upset. Personally, as someone who believes boxing judges should feel less pressured to never score a round a draw in modern times, that is still mind-boggling. Smelled like a typical ploy to assist an up-and-comer.