Fixing Fights
M. Abduh

Former champions, current fighters, trainers, & analysts agree: Haney – Lomachenko was a good fight. A close fight. Some scored it for Haney by a round or two, some for Loma by a round or two. Many scored it a draw. Several rounds hinge on a few punches. That said, the decision was no robbery.

Casual fans seem unaware of the old boxing maxim: the challenger must either score a decisive victory or a knockout to take the belt. Before Chuck Hull announced the winner of the 1987 Sugar Ray Leonard – Marvelous Marvin Hagler middleweight championship fight, I said to my father, “Sugar won that.” My father tersely reminded me, “Close fight goes to the champ.” Either way, no one was robbed, not Hagler, not Lomachenko. No doubt, judge David Moretti’s score of 116-112 (eight rounds to four) caused a maelstrom. Giving Haney the 10th was abominable. Loma dominated the round. But even if Moretti rightfully gave it to him, it would still have been 115-113 for Haney. & still…a unanimous decision.

Casual fans (& apparently a few ‘hardcore’ ones) seem to know little about how rounds are scored.

“Loma was the aggressor,” they say.

There are two issues with this statement: First, it’s a half-truth. If one watches the fight closely—free of fan bias—he will see that the bout was full of ebbs & flows. At times, Loma aggressed. At times, Haney assailed. Second, simply being the aggressor does not mean a fighter wins the round. The aggression must be effective, which means a fighter lands clean, hard punches & avoids being countered. Several of Loma’s “flurries” were either blocked by Haney’s gloves or answered. Thus, most rounds were swing rounds, not beatdowns. (Even Shakur Stevenson was forced to change his fight night analysis. After reviewing the bout several times, he concluded it was much closer than he originally thought.) Judges also score points for ring generalship: the fighter’s ability to control the squared circle & impose his will & style on his opponent. Again, both Haney & Loma took turns imposing their wills—round-by-round. Likewise, judges look for hard & clean punches. “Loma was snapping Haney’s head back!” says the casual fan—while Haney was punishing Loma’s rib cage. Body punches may not be as sensational as headshots, but they can certainly be just as “hard & clean.” As the uncrowned champion Sam Langford once told Joe Louis, “Kill the body, & the head will die.”

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Undoubtedly, boxing has judging troubles. Fight experts have forever declared this from the rooftops. But what is the solution? Boxing commentator Max Kellerman has a viable answer:       

As I mentioned at the beginning of this week, boxing has a scoring problem. I’m not talking about criteria. That’s easy enough. During each round, just ask yourself who you’d rather be. By the end of the round, you’ll know who to score it for. The problem is by how much.

Boxing is scored on what’s called the ten-point must system. The winner gets ten, & the loser always gets nine just about, unless he’s knocked down, then he’ll get eight. You almost never see a ten-eight round without a knockdown. So, you might see one fighter win a round big, & the other barely eke out the next one. Then after two rounds, the fight’s even, even though common sense tells you otherwise. Imagine a football game where one team wins the first quarter by a touchdown. The other wins the second quarter by a field goal, & somehow, they’re tied at the half as a result of that.

So how do we get to scorecards to better reflect the actual fight? Here it is. Don’t score all the rounds the same. You have ten points, right? Very close rounds are ten-nine. Decisive rounds, meaning you feel confident that one fighter or the other actually won, are ten-eight. Lopsided rounds, ten-seven. If a fighter’s knocked down, deduct two points. Knocked down twice, another two points. Touchdowns, field goals, two-point conversions, & extra points are not all scored the same, & neither should rounds in boxing be. We have ten points in the ten-point must system. Let’s use them.

Additionally, sportswriter Dan Rafael argues that judges need 

[T]raining, training, training. The key to me is that judges need to score fights on criteria that is more specific than it currently is & that fighters are also aware of what the judges are specifically looking for, so there can be no complaints. Right now, the criteria are a bit open-ended & not specific enough: ring generalship; clean, hard punching; effective aggression; defense. 

I agree with both men & have said so for years. Whatever can be done to correct the problem must be done. Posthaste. Meanwhile, not every decision is a robbery. Haney – Lomachenko, in particular, doesn’t even amount to petty larceny.