SteemSports Presenter:
SteemSports Editors:
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Two impressive specimens finally took to the boxing ring last weekend to determine who is currently the best middleweight boxer. The professional fight was contested for unified WBA (Super), WBC, IBF, Ring magazine, and lineal middleweight championship. The fight showcased a back and forth exchange of true efficient boxing technique with a side salad of power.
A few weeks earlier the promoter of this battle Oscar De La Hoya was perplexed and hurt by the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor, taking to social media to write “F*** YOU #MayweatherVsMcGregor BOTH OF YOU ARE DISRESPECTING THE SPORT OF BOXING #CaneloGGG Sept 16th,” wrote De La Hoya.
Clearly, the Golden boy promoter was rattled not by the fight but by the revenue it was to and did produce. That fight was less than a month before Canelo vs. GGG and he knew the spotlight had been snatched away. A lot of fans would have to choose which fight to buy on PPV and with Conor and Floyd being bigger stars it was highly unlikely the Canelo GGG fight was going to match those numbers. The pressure was now on for two of the biggest names to put on a battle for the ages to help save the reputation of boxing. De La Hoya knew Canelo and GGG knew it also.
The fight was masterful and going into the 12th and final round the boxing world could hold its head firmly aloft brimming with pride at what these two warriors had produced. When the final bell tolled both combatants raised their arms in celebration as did the people who bought the PPV who could justify the payment.
Now it was up to the judges who had dissected every one of those 12 rounds to score the fight using the "10 must system". The most widely used scoring system since the mid-twentieth century is the "10-point must system", so named because a judge "must" award ten points to at least one fighter each round (before deductions for fouls). Most rounds are scored 10-9, with 10 points for the fighter who won the round, and 9 points for the fighter the judge believes lost the round. If a round is judged to be even, it is scored 10-10. For each knockdown in a round, the judge deducts an additional point from the fighter knocked down, resulting in a 10-8 score if there is one knockdown or a 10-7 score if there are two knockdowns. If the referee instructs the judges to deduct a point for a foul, this deduction is applied after the preliminary computation. So, if a fighter wins a round, but is penalized for a foul, the score changes from 10-9 to 9-9. If that same fighter scored a knockdown in the round, the score would change from 10-8 in his favour to 9-8.
Adalaide Byrd, who has developed a reputation for debatable scoring, had the Mexican Canelo winning 118-110, a score which baffled most observers and put her at odds with her fellow judges.
Judge Dave Moretti scored the bout 115-113 in favour of the still unbeaten Golovkin, while Don Trella scored it 114-114 to create the split decision draw. Yet across the five rounds that Moretti and Trella scored for Golovkin, Byrd awarded each round to Alvarez.
The standing ovation the two fighters received had now morphed into boos and jeers. The fight that had saved the sport was now being viewed as a debacle. Why? Because the three human beings at ringside viewed things a little differently. Fights fans and former pros alike wanted Byrd’s head on a post, some blamed De La Hoya for fixing the fight in favor of his favourite son Canelo and others just scoffed " pfft, typical boxing".
No one seems to of mentioned the real issue here... HUMANS. I am not sure if anyone has been noticing for the last few thousand years but we are prone to mistakes. Why we still choose people to judge fights is ridiculous. Not 2 minutes after the fight, a beautifully constructed table by Compubox showed thrown punches, landed punches and more importantly at what power they landed.
So, here is an idea, just use these statistics to score the fight instead of judging. Back in the 1100s, there was no Compubox, no iPhone X and probably no flushing toilets. However, there are now. So let’s text each other, let's flush after we go and let's use the technology available to quantify and simplify the fight game so situations like this don't happen again. The viewers at home, the people in the audience and interestingly the fighters themselves would know if they are up or down. Just as you, almost, do in every other sport that is non-combative.
Image Sources:
boxingscene.com
hbo.com
thesun.co.uk
