Amid the widespread outrage over Brazil’s Robson Conceicao receiving a WBC junior lightweight title split decision victory over O’Shaquie Foster Saturday night in New Jersey, fight promoter Bob Arum said the heated reactions were stirred up unnecessarily by ESPN’s overreliance on CompuBox punch stats.
“I spoke to all our people who were there [including Top Rank President Todd duBoef and Vice President Carl Moretti], and they all said it was a close fight that could’ve gone 7-5 either way,” Arum told BoxingScene on Sunday.
“The CompuBox people weren’t even at the fight. That’s a fraud. I watched it on TV. I can’t tell exactly what’s landing. … You have to be there to see it. Like the judges are.”
While judge Ronald McNair had it 116-112 for titleholder Foster, judges Anthony Lundy and Paul Wallace scored it 116-112 and 115-113 for Conceicao in his fourth crack at winning a belt.
Foster was beside himself, saying, “I thought it was a shutout. I want the rematch. They stole the fight from me.”
ESPN’s broadcast team of Joe Tessitore, Timothy Bradley Jr. and Mark Kriegel saw the bout as a near Foster whitewash, as well.
Kriegel, ESPN’s scorer, had it 11 rounds to one for Foster.
Before the official cards were read, Tessitore pointed to the CompuBox numbers that showed Conceicao landed only 11 percent of his 701 total punches and said the outcome seemed evident based on that.
Conceicao, according to CompuBox, landed 10 or more punches in just two of 10 rounds.
Bradley called Foster’s effort “easy work,” only to blast the judges afterward by calling the scores “a gift from God” and “ridiculous,” adding that Conceicao “didn’t even touch that man. … What are we doing?”
BoxingScene’s Kieran Mulvaney was similarly aghast at the judging, writing, “There are bad decisions in boxing and there are horrendous decisions. And then there are utterly and totally incomprehensible, inexplicable decisions – like the one delivered … Saturday night, as Robson Conceicao won a 130-pound title … despite being outlanded and seemingly outclassed by O’Shaquie Foster.”
But Arum blasted the ESPN crew.
Arum said he thought Conceicao was more active, as the CompuBox numbers showed he out-punched Foster, 701-435.
“That announcing team, they’re not really scoring the fight. They’re looking at the punch stats,” Arum said. “The only way you score it 11-1 is by following the punch stats … without even telling [viewers] they’re inaccurate because they’re done from [a remote location]. And I don’t think anyone really knows that [CompuBox is charting punches] outside the arena.
“It’s very, very important the public knows that CompuBox is not [always] there [in the arena]. You can only get an approximation from television – if a punch lands, what kind of effect it has. You’re only seeing the fight from one angle.
“The judges are there. Basing it on punch stats is ridiculous.”
Kriegel, who was watching the bout from ringside, declined to comment to BoxingScene about his scorecard, but CompuBox creator Bob Canobbio, who next year will mark 40 years of tracking punch stats, defended the accuracy of his tallying.
“First of all, we’re not the official scorers. We provide a barometer of what’s happening in the ring. And what the announcers do with the numbers is up to them,” Canobbio said.
Canobbio said Arum is correct that CompuBox staff worked remotely for the card in Newark, New Jersey, headlined by Shakur Stevenson’s WBC lightweight title defense.
A little more than five years ago, because CompuBox couldn’t place staff at every venue, the company started tracking punch stats for high-profile cards remotely.
“And we’ve never had any blowback,” Canobbio said. “From the [television] camera on our dedicated stream, it’s often a better view than doing it the way we used to do, looking through the ropes [near ringside].”
Arum was bothered because he viewed Conceicao-Foster as “a very close fight.
“But listening to it on TV, to these guys, it sounded like the robbery of the century. Which it wasn’t. Conceicao was always pressing the fight,” Arum said.
Canobbio pointed out that his stats showed that as a fact in the total-punches disparity, and Canobbio noted that landed power punches was a minimal advantage for Foster, 58-49.
“But Foster landed a much higher percentage of both total and power punches,” Canobbio said. “Obviously, the judges favored [Conceicao’s] aggressiveness. Conceicao was the busier fighter. The numbers bear that out.
“The effectiveness of punches is not reflected in the stats. We just give you the hard data. I can’t tell these guys how to use our numbers, and as I’ve said for more than 30 years, we’re not scoring fights.”
To Foster’s contention that he deserved an immediate rematch, Arum would only say, “We’ll see.”
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