The anatomy of a controversial decision

Why are there so many controversial decisions in our sport?

There are a bunch of reasons that I’d like to suggest and outline for you, and you probably have your own list as well. Inherent in all of the reasons is the fact that boxing matches are decided by a scoring criteria that, despite the best efforts of everyone in the sport, remains subjective—that is, it is up for interpretation.

Let’s break down how controversy comes about.

First of all, and let me get this out of the way first, sometimes judges blow it.

Boxing judges, like the rest of us, are flawed human beings. Sometimes even the best judges can have a bad night. The sport tries to mitigate that fact by having three judges. But sometimes even three judges can have a bad night.

Are all judges equal in ability? Probably not, just like surgeons, lawyers, quarterbacks, and plumbers come in all levels of ability. Again, having multiple judges to score a fight is meant to mitigate the danger of having a not-so-accurate score.

Is there corruption in judging? Like, someone with a trenchcoat and wide-brim fedora shows up with a brown paper bag filled with non-sequential C-notes and says something to the judges like, “Hey kid, it’s not your night.” I’ve been doing this for 27 years, and it has never happened to me, nor have I ever seen it.

That’s all I’m going to say about that.

With that out of the way, let’s explore how controversial decisions come about – or are perceived to come about.

In my previous articles, I’ve talked about scoring and the hard rounds to score. I won’t rehash all of them here except to say that some judges will score one style over another. So, when you’re watching a bout between a good jabber and a power fighter, a fight with very little action, a fight with an abundance of action, or a bout with strong ebbs and flows, expect there to be a difference in scoring.

When that preference or interpretation differs from yours—and this is a big and—differs from the broadcast crew, many will see the scoring as flawed and in error. That’s when the C-word starts to be bandied about.

I guess what we all hope for is that there is one absolute—and only one absolute—way to score the action. We can hope for that, but it hardly seems realistic. I believe there are going to be rounds that are likely to be interpreted in different ways.



Is that controversial?
Maybe debatable would be a better word.

Forgetting that all rounds count the same

Those boring opening rounds count the exact same as the exciting championship rounds. When the opening half of a fight has very little action, it is easy to dismiss them and even forget about them entirely. You’re on your couch, you’re enjoying a beverage, you stop to greet the Grubhub guy—hell, why not? Not much is going on inside the ropes.

Well, those guys in the jackets and ties sitting on the barstools ringside have to turn in a scorecard every single round, whether it was a Hagler-Hearns-type round or something to watch when you’re out of melatonin. Those rounds count the same.

10-9 is 10-9, and most rounds are scored 10-9. Maybe that’s a flaw in the scoring system, but that is the scoring system. If you were in an alley watching a street fight that started slow and then progressed to where one hoodlum was beating the crap out of the other ne’er-do-well, it would be easy to say who won.

Professional boxing isn’t in an alley and it isn’t a street fight.

I know I’ve said it, but I’ll say it again:
All the rounds count the same.

Forgetting that boxing is a sport

Look, I’m a believer in the adage, “You don’t PLAY boxing.”

This is a brutal sport, and its goal is to do damage. Having said that, it is still a sport with a point system. When your favorite fighter walks in to land his or her power shots and takes a bunch of shots on the way in, you may think, “Wow, what a badass tough son-of-a-bitch!” But you know what? He or she probably just lost the round.

Sugar Ray Leonard, Hector Camacho, and Pernell Whitaker knew how to win rounds. Ray Leonard once said that he didn’t have to be angry or hate his opponent—he saw it as a sport. He was a great champion, and he understood the scoring system. You may or may not have liked the style of The Macho Man, especially later in his career, but he scored points and got out of the way—a perfect formula for winning rounds.

Elite fighters know how to win rounds. They score punches that are easy to see, they know when to pick up the action, and they avoid punishment. Boxers who let themselves get hit and smile while waving their opponent back in aren’t racking up the points. In a gym session, everyone watching might think that guy is toying with his opponent, doing whatever he wants and having his way. That may be the case, but that’s not how points are scored. It may make you the coolest guy at the Saturday afternoon sparring session, but it won’t win you rounds.

Busy fighters—even when they’re less skilled and less powerful than their opponents—can take rounds by just doing more. When they do that against a bigger name or fighter with the rep, some might see a controversy.

Score the round as you see it.
That’s all.

The non-close score in a close fight

Championship fights are actually 12 separate three-minute fights. Judges are supposed to forget about the rounds that came before the current round and not daydream about the rounds that are coming.

Some rounds can be razor-thin close.
Sometimes all 12 rounds can be razor-thin close.
Sometimes a fighter does just a fraction more to tilt the judges’ decision.
The judges will even tell you after the fight that it was razor-thin close.

So… it is possible that a razor-thin, super-close fight could end up 120-108, couldn’t it?
Yes.

Each round was super close, but one fighter did just a little more each round. It ends up in a perfectly justifiable one-sided score that will undoubtedly lead to controversy.

Announcers, writers, messageboard contributors, and fans won’t see it that way. They will argue that it was way too close to have a score that wide. The fact is that it definitely could come out that way. Fights are scored round by round.

And when scores come in like 116-112, 116-112, 117-111, or even 118-110, you do realize that over 12 rounds, in a close fight, all of those scores could be considered on target? When you analyze the master scoring sheet, you can see that the totals can be different, but if judges were in agreement over most of the rounds, is that really appalling? With the three-judge system, the judge with the differing score could even have been in agreement with at least one other judge in every round.
Their total comes out different, but it doesn’t mean they had an off night.

Television announcers, CompuBox, slow-motion replay

TV wants to put on a good show. One of the things I do outside of boxing is write mystery novels and plays. Any writing instructor will tell you that conflict is essential to tell a good story. Developing a storyline that a decision is fraught with controversy makes things interesting, doesn’t it?

If, when they announce the decision, the TV guys said something like, “Yeah, I can see that—that seems about right,” wouldn’t that feel out of place?

If you’ve been to a TV fight and you look at the announcers, you can see they’re as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. They’re listening to the booth, heading to the corners between rounds, setting up promos, and the crew is tapping them on the shoulder—it is relentless.

Some TV folks seem to score really well, but not all of them. Viewers tend to believe what they hear. It is entertainment when you’re on the couch. When you’re judging, you are trying to see everything, concentrate on it, and evaluate it in the moment. You have no outside data, no differing opinion, and no analysis except your own. It is not the same thing as taking in a fight for enjoyment.

People ask me all the time how I scored a fight I watched on TV. Usually, I say I watched it but I didn’t score. I know the difference.

If you want to score at home, you absolutely must turn off the sound, ignore CompuBox numbers, and don’t watch the replays or the TV judge’s score. It affects you even when you think it doesn’t. To score a fight like a real judge, view it as much as you can like a real judge.

Watching fights like that isn’t fun, but you may get to a score that differs from TV.
You may even agree with some of the “controversial” scoring.

Wouldn’t that be interesting?