A radical thought: What if boxing scoring isn’t actually corrupt or incompetent?
I know, I know. Before you leap into the comments to demand my head on a stick, I’m not defending Adalaide Byrd’s 118-110 card in favor of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in his first fight with Gennadiy Golovkin. Or CJ Ross’s 114-114 card for Canelo-Floyd Mayweather Jnr. Or Alejandro Rochin’s 115-111 card for Deontay Wilder in his first fight with Tyson Fury. Or the cards that screwed Lennox Lewis out of a win in his first fight with Evander Holyfield and the ones that screwed Pernell Whitaker against Julio Cesar Chavez Snr. Nelson Vazquez’s recent 117-111 card for Liam Paro over Richardson Hitchins was an abomination, Jose Juan Guerra’s 118-110 for Sugar Ray Leonard over Marvin Hagler was nonsense, and who could forget Roy Jones Jnr getting robbed at the Olympics?
Boxers and boxing fans have the right to feel cheated by oh-so-many decisions in the past. The aggrieved feeling has snowballed to the point that it now manifests more as a sort of painful bonding experience with other boxing fans than it might as even faint hope, let alone meaningful demand, for the sport to change.
Recently, though, boxing has produced some more questionable reactions after scores that aren’t so out-there. Pawel Kardyni scoring Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol 116-112 for Beterbiev caused a mild uproar, despite the other two scorecards differing in margin by just one and two rounds.
Then came some dissent from certain corners when all three judges for Oleksandr Usyk-Tyson Fury II awarded Usyk with unanimous 116-112 scores. These scores, though just one tick wider than the thinnest margin for victory at 115-113 (barring a 10-10 round, which I’ll get into), were viewed as unfair to Fury or generous to Usyk by some.
These reactions are as objectionable as a wonky scorecard. Both are dissociated from reality.
In a sport so subjective that “swing round” has become a colloquial term for a round that is difficult to score, differing scorecards are inevitable. Twelve-round fights, the most common at the championship level, provide quite a few opportunities for perceptions to diverge. Odds that judges will see the fight exactly the same as fans, journalists or analysts are fairly low, barring a wide crevasse between the fighters’ skills that makes the winner of any given round plainly obvious.
Cries of corruption or incompetence have become frequent, not only when a scorecard veers from consensus but also personal opinion. Even seasoned writers frequently lob criticism at judges, often remarking that one bears close watching after turning in a seemingly questionable card or claiming that another is completely unreliable. Aside from the beloved Steve Weisfeld, few boxing judges have escaped the media’s scorn.
As cathartic as outrage can be, in cases of marginal differences in scoring, the far likelier scenario than incompetence or corruption is that the judge, working well within the very broad and subjective scoring criteria, just arrived at a different opinion than the angry viewer. Also perhaps relevant is that judges – not the fans or even most media – are the ones with years of training on how to score fights.
And about that scoring criteria: I’m sure those who drew it up did the best they could; boxing scoring will always be subjective on some level. But we’ve arrived at a place where the application of the scoring criteria is subjective, too. Let’s start with just one issue – the disconnect over 10-10 rounds between America and the United Kingdom.
My personal belief is that splitting hairs to score incredibly close rounds is fairly silly. Boxing, a visceral, violent sport getting decided by a singular jab or glancing punch clashes wildly with its projected image to the public. So, 10-10 rounds are a reasonable way to ensure that rounds with no clear winner don’t have an impact on the overall scoring. British fans and boxing media frequently dip their fingers in the 10-10 jar.
But many American fans and media not only avoid scoring rounds 10-10, but they also look down on those who do. (Chris Mannix, a longtime boxing writer and analyst who knows far more about this sport than I do, is one such observer.) The AI judge for Usyk-Fury II, which produced a 118-112 scorecard for Usyk – including two drawn rounds – was disparaged for this reason.
The issue here isn’t who is right, though. It’s that such different schools of thought have come to coexist in a sport that should be judged through an objective criterion. Americans fight in the UK, Brits fight in America, most fighters have no affiliation with either country. Regardless of your personal philosophy, it’s not really clear in boxing culture at large whether 10-10 rounds are a thing or not. So, some advocate for them, others despise them, and nobody talks about the actual, written rule regarding 10-10 rounds: that judges are allowed to use them but encouraged to do so rarely.
That’s not even the worst of it. When fights get close, especially between fighters with contrasting styles, scores wind up all over the map. Those in the know can of course offer their own opinions, but all too often even the experts are reduced to saying, “It depends on what you like.” Jabs or power shots, defense or offense, clean shots that don’t hurt or glancing ones that do. Your decision!
This simple statement is an indictment of the scoring criteria, acknowledging that its intricacies do not always offer a clear path to scoring a round. But it’s also an enormous disservice to the fighters. These athletes take significantly more risk to their health in the present and future than those in non-combat sports, yet boxing can’t always cough up a clear reason why they lost on any given day.
A not-uncommon sight after a close fight: a third of the audience thinks the losing fighter was robbed, another third thinks the result was just and the final third disagrees with the result – but by small enough margins that they are also shaming the first third for using the word “robbery.” Who this helps, I have no idea.
It’s time for everybody to get on the same page. It doesn’t matter how. Use 10-10 rounds more often or don’t use them at all. Settle on three clean jabs equaling a clean power punch. Kill the 10-point must system if needed. Give out a warning after two clinches or 10 but agree on a criteria that is easier to follow. Fighters will adjust. Sure, boxers whose style is not favored by the new system will be angry – at first. But everybody will be relieved to have some clarity. Besides, with less subjectivity, judges can face real accountability instead of the uneducated fury of anybody who disagrees with them.
With the current system, the discourse is and will continue to be insufferable after every remotely close fight – even those like Usyk-Fury II, for which the judges were in complete agreement. Prioritize clarity and we might just end up with more unanimous decisions, in and out of the ring.
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