The Jury is Out on Judging game

Jokers are wild in recent boxing decisions leaving audiences around the world baffled and bemused. Not only the Boxing fans having reason to be disgruntled as the way of scoring bouts these days has raised a few eyebrows and inevitably left promoters and fighters taking another look at the script.
How should a fight be scored?. In most aspects of boxing the right and wrong ways to do things are separated by fine lines and my opinion on what is right in your opinion could be wrong. Let me try to clear things up.

In the red corner you could have a fighter with the game plan of going in to bully his opponent, be the aggressor and claim the centre of the ring. This fighter throws 70 punches in the first round but has only a 12% success rate.
In the blue corner is a fighter who plans to control the pace of the fight behind the jab and pick his openings. Using the ring well at distance but seemingly on the back foot as the aggressor comes onto to him, the guy from the blue corner only throws 56 punches but has a 18% success rate. Who wins the round for you?.
It is all down to preference, which do you prefer? An aggressive swinger and counter puncher or the more technical of fighters?, there’s no right or wrong answer. Unfortunately this is the way boxing is being scored
these days and if your favourite boxer is still standing with seconds left on the 12^th round it can be very twitchy even if you have him up by 4 rounds on your card we never know which way it’s going to go.

Point scoring is fairly simple to get your head around. Clean shots from the main face of the glove score points (knuckle area) not punches with laces also known as rabbit punches or punches around the back of the head. Body shots are scored when punches land in the body’s scoring zone ie, abdomen and ribs, not on the waist line or back. Punches landed rather than punches thrown should be but not always the telling factor. When your guy is pounding away on the other guy’s gloves yes it will get you out of your seat and wake the judges up but in reality means nothing and would not score points.

There is nothing new about questionable scoring in boxing but it seems to raising a few questions again. Carl Froch leads the protest with previously undefeated James Degale not far behind. WBC Super Middleweight champion Carl Froch has made an official complaint to the boxing hierarchy following his split decision win over Road Warrior Glen Johnson. 117-111 and 116-112 on two of the judges cards seemed about right in a closely contested battle but the Cobra’s complaint came about over the controversial 114-114 card of Japans Nobuaki Uratani. I had Froch down as 116-112 winner on my card which begs the question “what fight was Uratani watching?”.

 It is not an easy job for judges but another British boxer was left eating a bitter humble pie courtesy of the judges cards. This time the argument sides with the judges on the James Degale v George Groves grudge match as I had Degale up by two round but again it goes back to me previous statement, it goes down to which you prefer. A lot of close rounds in this classic 12 rounder which made most of the fight almost impossible to score and judges these days feel a little reluctant to score rounds as a draw. 115-115, 115-114, 115-114 was the full time score which seen George Groves come out on top.

If you want to know more about judges scoring blemishes then look no further than future Hall of Famer Oscar De La Hoya. A unanimous 115-113 decision win over Felix Sturm caused some concern and calculator sales went through the roof. De La Hoya did not always have such luck with the judges when a decision went against him against Sugar Shane Mosley despite having a superior punch success.

Other judges that have been under the proverbial knife for there whacky cards include Pierre Benoist for his blooper in the Sergio Martinez v Paul Williams fight with two judges scoring it 115-113 114-114 and Benoist 119-110. Jermaine Tayor v Bernard Hopkins’ 12 rounder in which Hopkins dominated the last round but judge Duane Ford somehow gave the round to Talyor which resulted in decision win.

It’s not all doom and gloom for boxing officials, sometimes they get it wrong and sometimes they get it really wrong but will it ever change and plus, what would we complain about if the officials got it right all the time?.