The importance of being the peoples fighter

Of course. And there's a reason they were recruited by the top promoters as well. And guys like Arum and King really have an excellent batting average at that sort of thing.

 

A prohibitive fan favorite fighter is generally going to get fair treatment at worst.

Even so, you have to flip the situation around, and look at the problems associated with the opposite decision.

For example handing the title to a challenger on a controversial pretext.

 

I'm sure it made a difference on some level. Each of the judges would have been familiar with the context of the fight and that Leonard was coming back from a near three year lay off. The quality of his performance would have made more of an impact on the judges because of all of that than if he had been an unknown challenger who was just being competitive with Hagler. Judges are human too and they would have been swayed on some level, even without being consciously biased.

 

Of course it helps to be the people’s fighter.

At the same time, I’ve seen it work the other way too, particularly in the case of Oscar vs Trinidad. Although he gave away the last few rounds by choosing to run, I still believe Oscar deserved to win. At the same time, I’m not mad at the result since I think it was good for the sport as a whole thst Trinidad won the decision and became a bankable fighter.

 

Oscar may have deserved the nod, but think back to when was the last time the DKP fighter got the short end of a controversial bout---scoring or early stoppage or anything.