Comments Thread For: Boxing needs more unanimous decisions

[BoxingUpdates]

A radical thought: What if boxing scoring isnt actually corrupt or incompetent?
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[surpass]

I think anytime you have a human as a judge/referee in any sport things can be subjective. I think athelets want consistancy on any score/penalty. Have a review system has helped for the most part in other sports, but other than knockdowns I can't see that helping in boxing. In baseball if you can get the balls/strikes done be a computer and its consistent then the playing field is more level. Maybe at somepoint AI can get so good at scoring that its take the judges out of the equation and as long as the same AI is used then the boxers are on the same playing field. there is also the notion of corruption with judges, not knowing if they were paid off. There needs to be more accountability.

[jlf85]

I think boxing should experiment with things. For example, try using 5 judges and throw out the two widest scores (kind of like the Olympics). I also wondered about having an odd number of rounds (ie 11 or 13 rounds) to try to eliminate draws. This could be a logistic issue...but if a fight is a draw after 12, have one last round to determine a winner. It would make for a hell of a final round.

Not sure what else you can do. The fact is that two people can sit down and watch the exact same thing (whether it's a hockey game, a chess match or a boxing match) and come away with entirely different conclusions on what occured.

One thing I did not realize, however, until recently that promoters often have a say in judge selection, often pay their travel, buy them dinner etc etc..if that's not a recipe for awful decisions, I don't know what is. People are human and can be influenced. Facts.

[Boxing 112]

There have been some bad scorecards but i think many are not as bad as made out. Close swing round going opposite way can switch a 115-113 to 116-112 and suddenly the card looks that much more awful.

Beterbiev Bivol case, the boxing app had live fan scoring. The most popular score was 116-112 Beterbiev. Yet you go on social media and had plenty of people claiming that was a bad score.

I would be interested to see a study, on people scorecards in relation to the network they watch it on.

In my opinion commentary and pundits has a big impact on fans opinions.

I also think peoples views are can be impacted by social media on top of that, people live scroll social media during the fight reading all these other opinions at the same time.

Judges: not saying judges are paid off, but to what extent is a judge influenced by the crowd noise, by the "a side" and main promoters fighter

[M312]

Judges are being told not to score 10-10 rounds because it'll cause more draws and make judges more indecisive... But if there isn't a clear winner then don't be forced to pick one.
They are professional judges. Just pick the right thing.
10-8 rounds where there's no knockdown too. Rarely see it.

At the moment we have judges giving rounds where they think someone might've landed an extra jab, the same score as when someone is totally beaten in the ring but doesn't go down. Obviously the first one can be seen differently to different people.

Also agree with more judges. Discard the extreme scores.

[surpass]

I think boxing should experiment with things. For example, try using 5 judges and throw out the two widest scores (kind of like the Olympics). I also wondered about having an odd number of rounds (ie 11 or 13 rounds) to try to eliminate draws. This could be a logistic issue...but if a fight is a draw after 12, have one last round to determine a winner. It would make for a hell of a final round.

I love the idea of having one round after a draw to settle things. Going beyond 12 rounds may put the fighters more at risk, which is why they went down from the 15 rounds. There may be more draws if they do 10/10 or 10/8 rounds more often, but with the final round to settle things that could fix that and add excitement. Maybe only for championships.

The promoters influence the judges with meals and travel should be eliminate, there is surely a bias there.