Judges

pac_man wrote: »

Why is scoring vary so much between judges? You look at the amateurs and you'll see fights scored 3-2, a flip of a coin decision that can determine a kids future.

The whole scoring criteria is subjective and has got worse with the elimination of computer scoring. In the woman's example in the article, she talks about "Domination of the round by technical + tactical superiority AND Competitiveness" as measures in scoring a fight. Talk about a grey area. Same with ring generalship in the pro's.

Reading that article caused me to think of the Parker-Fury fight. There were calls of robbery being thrown from all directions. I completely agreed with the result at the time. In my eyes Parker was the only one trying to win the fight.
I have had the benefit of being on both sides of the ropes in my time & I understand the responsibility on the fighter to try & win & the responsibility on the judge to recognise who's effort is better.

It is also very annoying to see the fight analysts scoring even rounds. Almost all of them do it, sometimes awarding 3 or 4 even rounds in a fight. As former fighters they will know all too well that judges are strongly encouraged to pick a winner for each round.

Good podcast that. Good speaker who knows his stuff.

I disagree with him on the even rounds. It's very much an American thing - they hate draws! And they've been hearing it for their whole lives, so they just don't accept draws as a valid result. You even see NFL games that end in a draw, they have overtime, which up until recently was 'first to score wins'. And that was often dictated by who got the ball first from the coin toss. What a ridiculous way to decide major sporting events!

When I mark even rounds it's usually because I don't think either fighter deserves to win the round. It's often a first round where there's a feeling out session where neither really throw or land anything of note. How does one deserve it over the other in those instances? They don't. I mark it even and don't have any gripes about it. I can't see how it's fair to do a mental coin toss to decide who gets the round and then the other guy dominates the next round clearly and is only level on the cards.

I totally agree with him on the influence of commentators. I really think if you want to judge impartially, it is essential to mute the first time around. No matter how honest you are, if you do it after having scored it already, you're inclined not to stray too far from your initial assessment, as otherwise you're admitting you're being influenced and nobody wants to do that.

Listening to the Sky commentator rattling off about Mayweather's "masterclass" against Pacquiao especially his defense, while utterly ignoring Pacquiao's almost equally impressive defense was a perfect example. I thought Mayweather won that fight fairly, but all rounds were closely fought with Mayweather nicking most of them, but you'd swear the Filipino was being beaten from pillar to post listening to some commentary.

Another interesting one was the second Froch/Kessler fight. I attended that live with my buddy. We were surrounded by Froch fans and I can tell you there was serious tension around the 9th/10th rounds as it really looked from our vantage (very good seats) that the Dane was getting the better of it. Froch finished better, but until the actual decision was announced nobody was really certain. And they were Froch fans! However, when I came back and logged in here, everybody thought it was a very comfortable win for Froch! There wasn't even an argument that it was close. I found that strange and admit I haven't seen it on screen since so I don't know what the commentary was like, but it always stuck with me.