By Mauricio Sulaimán
President of the WBC / Son of José Sulaimán
Boxing is one of the very few sports that defines the winner through subjective appreciation of the officials, named judges.
In our sport, three judges score the actions, and this is done round after round. In essence, each round is a completely different fight from the other.
Unlike diving or gymnastics, boxers have no idea what the judges have scored.
Divers and gymnasts see their score, immediately following their participation, and thus can strategize for their next competitive move. They have the ability to decide to take higher risk which by virtue can generate more points, a higher score.
The boxing judge has an unenviable job, as they are seldom recognized until there is a controversial decision, and then they can be pointed out as corrupt, blind, incompetent and even criminal, when it is thought that they performed inadequately.
The difference between a judge’s scoring and everyone else’s scores has a significant amount of variables which at the end could make the difference in opinions, let’s look into it :
The judge is sitting in a unique position, there is nothing between them and the actions in the ring, although in truth it is not necessarily the best place, since he is positioned below the action, with photographers, at times, all over him , and lots of people milling around shouting, and many angles are blocked by the referee, or by the boxers themselves.
The judge is not a raw rookie, tipsy or drunk, while many fans at home or in the arena are enjoying a beer or two and a good time, savoring an unforgettable evening, without a care in the World. The judge is fully concentrated in the actions in the ring during the three full minutes of each round, believe me, hardly anyone else is fully concentrated due many potential distractions in the arena or at home.
The judge does not have favorites, but the vast majority of those who watch boxing identify in a partisan way, with one of the boxers. The judge does not bet, some or many who watch the fight do have a particular interest in the result.
One problem I see is that boxing is scored round by round; There are some that are won with a minimal difference, rounds with little action with just a few punches landed, compared to others in which a big difference in favor of the winner produced by strong dominance of the actions winning clearly.
Ultimately, both rounds are scored 10-9.
There can be fights in which one wins the rounds widely, and the other by a minimal margin, but in the end everyone considers the winner who won the rounds that were spectacular.
In golf, a drive could be 250 yards and the putt can be just 10 centimeters, both worth one stroke.
There are many things that the ordinary fan does not know about the official criteria for scoring actions in boxing.
Judges are trained and certified to achieve uniformity in what they should see, perceive, process and score.
The most important thing for boxers is to connect blows, quality rather than quantity, their effectiveness and their impact effect.
The style that dominates the round is also taken into account, who manages to impose their style on the opponent, and as the last criterion, is pure aggressiveness. Missed punches, blows landed on gloves or in illegal areas do not count…
Effective aggressiveness is what counts, regardless of whether you are going forward, taking lateral steps or even moving backward, but connecting. That is what must be considered.
Knockdowns are very important and must necessarily represent an additional point for the fighter who has inflicted this.
In other words, a round in which there is a knockdown must be scored 10-8, unless the fighter knocked down, has dominated extraordinarily throughout the round.
A knockdown is like a goal, a home run or a touchdown.
DID YOU KNOW…?
The WBC has some initiatives that are not accepted in the United States and England, unfortunately most of the big fights take place in these two countries, where they do not accept:
Open Scoring of the official scores of the judges after the fourth and eighth rounds is accepted by the rest of the world, because it allows the corners to adjust the strategy by knowing what the judges are scoring.
Use of noise cancelling headphones, allowing maximum concentration and eliminating distractions and external influences.
Basic guidelines for judges in the WBC:
- 10-10: Even round, don’t know who won at the sound of the bell
- 10-9: Clear and definite advantage.
- 10-9: Both boxers go to the canvas, but one of them clearly wins the round.
- 10-8: A knockdown.
- 10-8: Total dominance of one of the fighters throughout the entire round, even when there is no knockdown.
- 10-7: Two knockdowns.
- 10-7: Knockdown and total domination.
- 10-6: Three knockdowns
The WBC through the leadership of the NABF and the ring officials committee led by Duane Ford , has instituted a system which requires the judges to score the rounds both numerically ( quantitative ) and qualitative . The judge must score the usual score with numbers and then mark a box to indicate the qualitative side .
- C = Close
- M = Moderate
- D = Decisive
- ED = Extreme Decisive (in this case, the score must be 10-8)
This has brought judges to higher levels of concentration, greater uniformity among peers and higher success rate.
Today’s Anecdote
The World Boxing Council was responsible, in coordination with the main boxing authorities, in changing all matters related to judges and referees.
My dad told us with great satisfaction: “Before, the referee was the only one responsible for determine who was the winner, when there was no knockout victory; He simply raised the hand to whomever he considered to have been deserving of victory.”
Afterwards, three officials were introduced to score, two judges plus the referee, who scored the actions on the card. Finally, the referee was eliminated as a judge so that he could pay 100 percent of his attention to protecting the fighter.
I appreciate your comments at [email protected]
Alright fellas let’em have it lol
Yes, I am waiting for the day when an article is published discussing the corruption and negative influences are cleansed of the WBC where certain fighters are protected and others are thrown to wolves, etc. Any fool in the boxing game knows these negative issues exist. Yet, Sulaiman will turn his cheek and rave how great the WBC is in boxing. Fightnews will stay neutral and admire Sulaiman’s presence on this website.
Are you referring to how Benavidez was Canelo’s WBC mandatory for 2 years and somehow didn’t get a title shot. I’m convinced these articles are used to troll. They seem to be coming more often. I was hoping they’d at least inform fans Duran successfully received his pacemaker.
Good points…
And in other news, today is the official start of spring time!
– 50 degrees in Zoo Jersey today.
– Break out the sunscreen and bathing suit….
Not yet, Its in the 30s in Jersey
Spring sprung yesterday!
– Rotate on it, Mr. Sillyman………..
How about adding a few paragraphs in your article that discusses corruption in judging influenced by rankings, hometown favorites, and monetary betting? Yep, bet we wont see that in your article.
Throwing this out there, but boxing scoring, by nature, is nonsensical. The 10-point system, whereby every round is basically just a one-point advantage barring knockdowns, is the problem. There should be wider use of the scoring range. I’d like a modest win of the round to be one-point, a clear round-winner should be 2, a guy battering a beating his opponent should be 3 points, etc. A knockdown should add another point of difference, or even two points. The way boxing is scored now is akin to a baseball game where every inning is only a one-point difference regardless of how much runs are actually scored.
I think much of the problems in boxing scoring are actually just poor understanding and bias of fans. When you look at the data it’s pretty obvious.
THAT BEING SAID, this is one place that I think has room for improvement. With all the criteria used to judge a fight, a judge is first and foremost looking at clean effective punching, the other criteria are ancillary really.
However, with the 10 point must system as it stands, a fighter can land far more clean punches throughout a fight and still lose the fight.
It doesn’t usually happen that way, but I think experimenting with half points or making it so there is greater separation by allowing the victor ten and the loser fewer and fewer points the worse they do.
For example, a very tight round may be 10-9.5 whereas a really one sided round would be 10-8 or 8.5. Or a tight round is 10-9, a medium round is 10-8, and an excessive round is 10-7. There are many ways you can work with the numbers, but it could add an incentive for fighters not just to win a round, but to win one convincingly. Theoretically, it’s a fairer way to do things if judges can accurately estimate and number the degree to which a fighter wins a round.
This could help create a more offensive game too. Boxing over the years has evolved into a very defensive game, and it may be a touch safer (although this isn’t really founded as most damage is done in sparring), but most would say it’s not as entertaining. If you look at connect percentage differences in the past (say pre 21st century), they are nowhere near as disparate as today. Even with highly effective defensive fighters.
Look at Whitaker Chavez. One of the worst decisions ever. Whitaker clearly won that fight but it was called a draw in the days when the Sulaiman, Don King, Chavez love triangle was in full force. That aside, Whitaker landed 39% of his shots, Chavez 35%. If you take a fight today where a fighter looked at as a defensive master wins a clear decision over another fighter, you will generally see a far greater disparity in connect percentage.
There would be no cost to experiment with this either. You could unofficially judge a bunch of fights in real time along with the. current method. Gather enough data, and then see which is a better metric for judging. It would cost next to nothing to implement. It’s pretty self-explanatory. We are talking basic addition.
Plus the more things you try, the more likely you are at improving a scenario, provided you can prove it works in real time before implementation. Implementing it without testing is foolish and could give you a scenario like the computerized amateur scoring.
– I agree with you.
– If there were a “5 Point Must System”, it could work something like:
5 – 4 (Fighter A wins the round but its close).
5 – 3 (Fighter A wins the round big time but no knock down).
5 – 2 (Fighter A wins the round with a knockdown).
5 – 1 (Fighter A wins the round with two knockdowns).
5 – 0 (Fighter A wins with 3 knockdowns).
In this System, all of the available points can be used……
I like this and at least it gets a debate going on how scoring can be better. After decades of bad decisions maybe boxing can make the necessary improvements.
cheatam, weisfeld , sutherland, are the “fixed nevada judges ” . i am sure they will be the “judges” for canelo- mungia. I can hardly wait to see their scorecards if the “fight” goes the distance ..
Beterbiev doesn’t leave the decision in the hands of the judges.
This is actually accurate and NEEDED. As someone who has gone through judges training, I can tell you bad official decisions are very few and far between. Usually what happens is that fans are influenced by commentators who don’t have a good understanding of how a boxing match is scored and/or are victim to the very human bias of weighing losses more than gains.
In any type of judging, uniformity and consistency is key. If you look at the data, judges are quite consistent across the board. It’s just the natural human bias to focus on the bad decisions.
After going through training, I can tell you I rarely disagree with judges’ scores, which should tell you that the problem may not be in the judging, but in the conveying of judging criteria. You can attempt to make the claim that it’s not the fans but the system that is flawed. However, the system has a very reasonable and replicable rubric that consistently gets the desired result. Try doing that with fan scorecards.
Here is an example of bad commentating: The Vasyl Lomachenko Teofimo Lopez fight… That fight was not a very close fight, and the commentators made it sound as if it was. Teofimo Lopez did not have one round where he was outlanded in power punches. 119-09, 116-112, 117-111 were the scores if I remember correctly. None of these are bad scores. Overall they depict a relatively dominant fight with some close rounds.
Here is an example of what I would say is questionable judging, and it stands to reason when you look at the circumstances. Bivol – Canelo. The fact that all three judges (and good judges) had it 115-113 is a bit suspect. Bivol clearly won that fight, and the fact that not one scorecard indicates that is not something one would expect. Now, I don’t believe there is any sort of direct corruption or foul play. However, when you have a mega money fighter, there are a lot of biases and incentives that can come into play that will allow a judge, perhaps unwittingly, to favor the mega money fighter. Biases/perverse incentives can be present in any fight. However, it’s this sort of fight where they can be most pronounced. Still, the right guy won. So it’s not a horrible decision.
Bad judging that comes to mind is evident in fights like Holyfield Lewis 1, Chavez Whitaker, Lara-Williams.
Overall judges get the right winner with high accuracy. It reminds me of the old idea that weathermen are actually bad at predicting the weather, when in fact, they aren’t, especially when the prediction is relatively near to the event. A 5-day forecast can predict the weather accurately something like 90 percent of the time, and it’s a future event.
It is important though that fans can differentiate between truly bad official judging, a close fight, and poor judging by commentators/fans. If fans keep crying robbery over fights that aren’t really robberies, you’re crying wolf and ultimately negatively impacting potential improvement.
Colby is correct. Most of the times fans are influenced by biased and incompetent commentators or their own bias. Everyone has a favorite fighter and they only see the good that fighter does and not the bad. Turn the volume off when you watch a fight and tune out the horrible commentators,
– Agree w/Super Fan.
– I also think we tend just to watch the fight, and not actually score the rounds.
– If we did, we may be surprised at our final tallies at the end…..
I admit, I could never be a judge. I might be biased towards my personal favorites on occasion. A lot of judges are totally biased in favor of the hometown fighter; Jeff Horn vs. Manny Pacquiao in Australia is the perfect example.
Another day, another waste of time. Can’t this guy get the hint? He’s not wanted. What does this hack have over this website? We have enough corruption..
We need some kind of Solomon repellant to keep him away from here…or does he own this place or what?
What’s he going on about today, boxing judges? They ought to make boxing judges wear outfits with horizontal stripes, like they were on the chain gang, where they belong.
His post has people responding and talking about the subject. If his talks were so bad we wouldnt be discussing it. Plenty other articles on this site dont get this type of attention.
Welcome All!
Not a fan of the optional 4th and 8th round WBC open scoring system. But I support the use of 10-10 rounds. One flaw of the 10-point must scoring system is that if a judge wins a round by a little or a lot, if a knockdown is not scored, it is a traditional 10-9 round. Boxing never sees even rounds in USA jurisdictions as they are frowned upon by the ABC, (The Association of Boxing Commissions) who’s unified rules are the basis for World Title fights in the USA and Canada. The British Boxing Board of Control uses a similar system. In the USA and UK, the local boxing commission has a say along with the promoter in selecting judges and refs. Most of the time, we see a USA ref in a USA fight and a UK ref in a UK fight. I prefer the greater world championship neutrality in the rest of the world supported by all four sanctioning bodies. The use of international judges and refs for all world championship fights. That is the way boxing should be run at the championship level around the world. I would prefer totally neutral judges and refs over having judges from the same country as one of the fighters. A close second option would be one judge from the champ’s country, one judge from the challenger’s country, and one judge that is from neither country. I also support the use of instant replay review between rounds on knockdowns and low blows vs. body punches. If the replay is inconclusive, the original call stands. I also support noise reduction headphones to eliminate crowd noise and potential crowd bias so that the judges can concentrate on the scoring of the fight. I would also petition to all boxing federations the use of a comments sheet for all judges on their scorecards, so that if a fight goes the distance, the judges can comment on the specific reasons why they scored the fight as the did. It provides feedback directly from their experiences of evaluating the fight. I do not support additional judges to render a fair decision. More officials does not equate to better judges and will render the traditional three judge panel “less important.” If boxing has a qualified three judge panel, that should be more than enough to render the right decision.
The fact that Sulaiman has stated that popular opponent Reggie Strickland shouldn’t have been allowed to box, shows that the Lebanese businessman operating his profitable sanctioning enterprise out of Mexico, knows absolutely nothing about boxing.
Strickland was slick, saved countless shows by taking fights on a minute’s notice, and never took a beating. Not every boxer is gonna have a winning record…Facts! If you were to apply Sulaiman’s logic to other sports, the Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns would’ve been kicked out of the NFL years ago for going winless for a whole season!
The WBC is more a terrorist organization than anything else.