Comments Thread For: Boxing judge Tom Schrecks debut column: the scoring criteria and the concept of doing damage

[BoxingUpdates]

In the first installment of his new series for BoxingScene, New York-based boxing judge Tom Schreck explains how he officially scores fights, including what he looks for during a round.
[Click Here To Read More]

[SteveM]

Well, this is very welcome, so thank you.

Obviously virtually none of us posters are clued up enough to criticise but we can all have opinions. Mine is that whereas you let the other three criteria flow into clean punching I would let the other three criteria flow into effective aggression.
You identified that the point of pro boxing is to cause damage. And hopefully not be damaged. There's no point causing damage to the opponent if you are shipping more damage yourself. I agree with you that 'effective' is the key word in effective aggression. Bivol threw cleaner punches, his defence was equal to Beterbiev's for more rounds but in the end Beterbiev's aggression, however he carried it out was more effective. Even his punches on Bivol's guard were leading to aggregate concussion or damage. I suspect that if it'd been a 15 round fight Beterbiev would have stopped Bivol or at least won on wider scorecards. I know it's a round by round scorecard but even when Bivol was feeling chippy and out-landing Beterbiev he was suffering more damage from fewer blows. I gave Bivol 4 rounds.
In the end, it is all about damage - as you say. Admittedly, there are always exceptions and sometime you'll get two light hitting fighters up against each other who don't seem to cause noticeable damage to each other in the majority of the rounds - I suppose then another of the criteria comes into effect such as clean punching and defence.

[steeve steel]

Then how is it possible for one judge to score a fight 117-111 for one fighter, and another 116-112 for the other?

[roademier]

I'm sure all judges would say they had an off night. I'm wondering if Mr. Shreck will let us know of any of his if he had any.

[Nightfall]

All judges already have it in their minds to give close rounds to a certain fighter in every fight. Corrupted cowards

[ruykiol]

The referee needs to make important decisions for the match, quite exciting and interesting.

[sege64]

Then how is it possible for one judge to score a fight 117-111 for one fighter, and another 116-112 for the other?

Well it is "possible" because all of the scoring criteria is subjective. If you worded that poorly and actually mean something like "How is it likely or justifiable for one judge to score a fight 117-111 for one fighter, and another 116-112 for the other?" then it could be close rounds scored differently, different views of the ring cause the relent judges to miss or give higher weighting to any of the four criteria, either of the judges score some punches that the other feels didn't land cleanly or have an effect, that the close rounds had to be separated by something other than clean effective punches landed and one judge favored effective aggression and the other defense or ring generalship. Or probably many other scenarios.

However likely it is or isn't to happen, to suggest that it is "impossible" for one judge to score a fight 117-111 for one fighter, and another 116-112 for the other without corruption or foul play, is dumb.

[CubanGuyNYC]

Thanks, Tom. This is one of the most interesting ideas for an ongoing topic I’ve ever seen on this site. Looking forward to more of your insight.

[CubanGuyNYC]

Then how is it possible for one judge to score a fight 117-111 for one fighter, and another 116-112 for the other?

I’m certain this question will be addressed by the writer in a future article. The first entry, logically, covered the scoring criteria for boxing matches.

[sege64]

The only time I've seen a breakdown like this on boxing scoring was Steve Weisfeld's version that is online on PBC. There are inconsistencies between the this article and Steve's.

Weisfeld talks about amount of clean punches vs how hard punches are. Tom doesn't cover this with clarity imo, although he does talk about doing damage. But to be clear, 5 clean landed jabs that have a discernible effect vs one clean hook that appears to have a bigger effect than those sweet, effective 5 jabs combined...which is worth more in terms of scoring? I've always thought that it is the single hook. If that did more damage, had a bigger effect (including taking into account the ring generalship or effective aggression derived from controlling the action for a decent period of the round with those 5 jabs) then it is worth more on the score card that those 5 jabs. Is this the case Tom?

Also, I could have sworn that Weisfeld's article ranked the criteria from most important to least important as clean punches, effective aggression, defense, ring generalship. However, that doesn't seem to be the case now.
Tom doesn't explicit state their ranking, but just says "starting our way at the bottom and moving to the top." - What does this mean? Is bottom criteria the least important criteria? if so that gives us from most important criteria to least: Clean punches, Effective aggression, ring generalship, defense.
Whatever their meaning, the two judges didn't list the criteria in the same order.


Something I've wondered about is how when Amir Khan went up two weight divisions to fight Canelo, he looked to me to be running rings around Canelo in the first few rounds with his feather fisted (but clean landed) punches. Canelo got him to the body and Khan noticeably slowed down, and then about the next round Canelo nailed him with that shot and the fight was over. But after the fight, from memory, Canelo was up on at least two of the cards. The only way that could be imo is A. The Canelo factor with judges, or B. Khan's shots that were landing cleanly, were deemed not to have hardly any affect on Canelo (which they weren't really) so the rounds got scored to Canelo for some other factor such as ring generalship. Seeing as Khan was a much smaller fighter with much much less power, this should mean based on the way that that both Tom and Steve describe "clean punches" which is the effect they have, or the damage they cause, that there was no way Khan could have possibly won that fight....without knocking Canelo out, as he simply lacked the power to put a dent in Canelo. Obviously the fight was a total mismatch that should never have been sanctioned anyway, but if this is the case, how can you have a fight that realistically one fighter simply cannot win based on the scoring criteria? There are probably similar examples that exist within the same weight class also.