Comments Thread For: Is tracking punches by A.I. a better way forward?

[jackblack008]

For me the eye opener was Canelo GGG 2 in which AI gave a clear edge to GGG.
I would say lets have 2 hunan judges and 1 AI judge. Thar AI judge can be a aggregate of multiple models to avoid any biases.

[JeBron Lamez]

Wake up. Before anybody changes the judges they need to completely overhaul the scoring system because it’s pure f***ing nonsense. Four competing scoring criteria and an arbitrary and nonsensical 10 point must system both need to go.

Does this mean that you think a different system might make the judges more consistent & reliable?

It may be that AI is more effective than humans under any scoring system, but then there's always the element of ksab which (theoretically at least) imho does matter when scoring for example a very messy fight with a lot of inside skill being used. It isn't obvious that AI could ever develop such nuance.

Damn, this is a more interesting topic than I first thought!

[TheOneAboveAll]

Does this mean that you think a different system might make the judges more consistent & reliable?

It may be that AI is more effective than humans under any scoring system, but then there's always the element of ksab which (theoretically at least) imho does matter when scoring for example a very messy fight with a lot of inside skill being used. It isn't obvious that AI could ever develop such nuance.

Damn, this is a more interesting topic than I first thought!

Yes. I think the I’ll-conceived scoring system is something that, surprisingly, a lot of fans overlook. After every single fight of consequence goes to a decision there are three days of wailing and gnashing of teeth from fans about how corrupt judges are. People take for granted that foundational things like the judging and scoring system automatically makes sense, but under the slightest bit of scrutiny, the problems are plainly evident. I do think AI present some interesting possibilities to improve things like punch stats, but I don’t at all think that solves the bigger problems Because this is not amateur boxing and it doesn’t just come down to punches thrown and landed. I have often argued that the sport may actually benefit from a bad scoring system because the controversy caused by bad scoring decisions is, counterintuitively, what keeps the sport alive.

[TintaBoricua]

A lot of people that love to criticize judges’ scorecards constantly would be surprised at how often they ALSO would have scores that vary wildly from the public.

There’s set criteria for scoring fights but at the end of the day it’s still awfully subjective.

I 100% guarantee that if you took 5 posters from this very thread and stuck them ringside to watch Pacquiao-Marquez 1, Ortiz-Bohachuk, or Haney-Lomachenko and not allowed them to talk or communicate with each other during the fight (as judges in real life), you would get wildly varying scorecards.

Of course, in order for this experiment to have legitimate and objective results you would have to make sure that said posters have never seen said fights so they aren’t hampered by pre-conceived notions or stories about how either how said fighter was “robbed” or that “fighter A or B” didn’t get enough credit.

Trust me on this.

I’ve taken it upon myself to fill up 3 or 4 notebooks’ worth of scorecards for a bunch of fights. Some are easy to score (Klitschko-Peters, Mailganggi-Diaz 2, Trinidad-Hopkins) while the ones that I firmly believe are God’s honest truth difficult to score (live setting/no do overs) are fights where there’s two way action, back-and forth affairs, or both share success in differing styles (clean punching/low outputting vs. higher activity and connect percentage/much less power)… any of the first two Pacquiao-Marquez fights, Canelo-Lara, or Martinez/Williams 1.

If the boxing establishment really wanted to fix controversy, the quick and dirty solution would be to score it Olympic style, tally up scoring punches, review the tapes, and have the organizations announce the victor a day later after tape reviews. I would honestly hate that because then you have everybody on pins and needles waiting for the “official result announcement” for a day.

But even then, even if somebody came up with an objective, immediate solution to the scoring issue, the old heads and diehards and boxing journalists would not accept it and do you know why?

Because everybody loves the drama and uncertainty of waiting for the judges’ scorecards after a fight…

50 years from now if this gets fixed, some people that were around from our time will be saying, “I remember the good old days, the exciting days. You could watch Kermit Cintron get utterly outboxed by Sergio Martinez, dropped, stopped, allowed to continue, think that Martinez had it in the bag only for the judges’ to pull out the rug from under you and announce the match as a draw…and the everybody would feign outrage as we usually do, followed by half-assed attempts for us to turn away from boxing………only to come back to it. It’s a drug. Boxing is compelling.”

As Larry Merchant once said, “Boxing is show business…WITH BLOOD.”

[pnut901]

I don't think it's even debatable that AI beats compubox. Biased humans hitting buttons is massively out of date and constantly inaccurate.

I'm not so sure about giving the stats to judges though.

How would AI be able to score a fight ? Through what mechanism ?

[Toffee]

How would AI be able to score a fight ? Through what mechanism ?

I wasn't suggesting it would, I was saying that it could do the punch stats better than humans.

But an Artificial Intelligence solution could obviously be developed to score fights too. I'm not sure what you mean by 'mechanism'. They'd use every camera angle, and use machine learning from past fights to get the criteria right.

[tyler87432f]

A lot of people that love to criticize judges’ scorecards constantly would be surprised at how often they ALSO would have scores that vary wildly from the public.

There’s set criteria for scoring fights but at the end of the day it’s still awfully subjective.

I 100% guarantee that if you took 5 posters from this very thread and stuck them ringside to watch Pacquiao-Marquez 1, Ortiz-Bohachuk, or Haney-Lomachenko and not allowed them to talk or communicate with each other during the fight (as judges in real life), you would get wildly varying scorecards.

Of course, in order for this experiment to have legitimate and objective results you would have to make sure that said posters have never seen said fights so they aren’t hampered by pre-conceived notions or stories about how either how said fighter was “robbed” or that “fighter A or B” didn’t get enough credit.

Trust me on this.

I’ve taken it upon myself to fill up 3 or 4 notebooks’ worth of scorecards for a bunch of fights. Some are easy to score (Klitschko-Peters, Mailganggi-Diaz 2, Trinidad-Hopkins) while the ones that I firmly believe are God’s honest truth difficult to score (live setting/no do overs) are fights where there’s two way action, back-and forth affairs, or both share success in differing styles (clean punching/low outputting vs. higher activity and connect percentage/much less power)… any of the first two Pacquiao-Marquez fights, Canelo-Lara, or Martinez/Williams 1.

If the boxing establishment really wanted to fix controversy, the quick and dirty solution would be to score it Olympic style, tally up scoring punches, review the tapes, and have the organizations announce the victor a day later after tape reviews. I would honestly hate that because then you have everybody on pins and needles waiting for the “official result announcement” for a day.

But even then, even if somebody came up with an objective, immediate solution to the scoring issue, the old heads and diehards and boxing journalists would not accept it and do you know why?

Because everybody loves the drama and uncertainty of waiting for the judges’ scorecards after a fight…

50 years from now if this gets fixed, some people that were around from our time will be saying, “I remember the good old days, the exciting days. You could watch Kermit Cintron get utterly outboxed by Sergio Martinez, dropped, stopped, allowed to continue, think that Martinez had it in the bag only for the judges’ to pull out the rug from under you and announce the match as a draw…and the everybody would feign outrage as we usually do, followed by half-assed attempts for us to turn away from boxing………only to come back to it. It’s a drug. Boxing is compelling.”

As Larry Merchant once said, “Boxing is show business…WITH BLOOD.”

AI may outperform humans in any scoring system, but there’s always the factor of KSAB (Knowledge, Skills, Ability, and Behavior) that, theoretically, still matters—especially in situations like a chaotic fight where a lot of inside fighting techniques are in play. It’s not clear whether AI could ever fully grasp or replicate such nuanced elements.

[TintaBoricua]

There’s also another factor to consider for scoring fights for A.I. They’d score it based on footage. And the available footage wouldn’t be able from every single angle, nor do I think they would able to judge the effectiveness of a punch. And before someone says, “You actually can. If the guy’s head snaps back, it’s a big punch that rocked him, therefore…effective.”

Naseem Hamed was often contorting his body in unorthodox ways in order to slip and avoid punches that caused him to flail wildly even when just grazed…giving the impression that he was massively hurt which wasn’t necessarily the case.