Are Judges ruining Boxing
I know over the years there has always been bad decisions from boxing judges, but things have changed, in the past a fighter would get a bad decision brush himself down and be back in the ring again a couple of weeks later with the decision forgotten about. With modern boxers one bad decision can almost destroy a fighters career, even being granted a re-match could take up to the best part of a year.
Look at Damaen Kelly for example, he fought his heart out against Simone Maludrottu for the European Title, he won nearly every round in my opinion, and nearly everyone watching apart from the three men at ringside. I have watched the fight a number of times in disgust trying to work out how one judge scored it 118-111 in the favour of Maludrottu. This fight has basically ruined Damean Kelly as a fighter he had his heart ripped out that night and although he got a rematch 7 months later he wasn’t the same fighter and was stopped in three rounds.
There are so many to speak of, another big example for me was the fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Sturm, De La Hoya already had his big money match lined up with Bernard Hopkins and took on at the time undefeated Felix Sturm. De La Hoya came into the ring and for the first time in his career looked out of shape. Sturm out boxed and out sized him for the whole contest. If De La Hoya lost there would be millions of pounds lost so as long as he was on his feet at the end of the fight he would win, basically that is what happened. Sturm lost a big part of his career because of the loss and it took nearly two years before he got another shot at a major title.
With all the modern technology there has to be a better and fairer way of scoring fights, boxers train too long and dedicate so much of their lives more than in any other sport to be robbed of a victory that was so obviously there’s. I have interviewed lots of professional boxers and asked them about what they think. I am yet to come across any who are happy with the current scoring method. What should be done ? That is the million dollar question, you can’t just score a professional fight on the number of punches landed, it works for amateur boxing but that is a different sport.
I carried out a recent interview with Reggie Johnson and he came up with a great suggestion of having 3 former world champions judging the fight as well as the officials, this would pressure them into scoring correctly. Or if there has been a poor decision there should be a right to appeal and have a fight re-scored by a panel and the decision be reversed if incorrect. I realise this will take something away from the sport as every fighter who lost would probably be appealing against it. Also to be given a world title belt and then have it taken away after a decision has been turned around would also not be fair on the fighter.
Something has to be done though as it is ruining the sport, a number of times of late I have come away from watching a fight with a bad taste in my mouth after seeing yet another shocking decision. Things can be changed, as they have recently with the British Title fights now having 3 judges rather than being judged solely by the referee, which is an improvement if the judges do their job correctly.
I can fully understand when the rounds are hard to score and the fight is close it goes on that persons judgement, I have no problem with that whatsoever. For example in my opinion Oscar De La Hoya did enough the other week to beat Floyd Mayweather, a certain amount of people will agree with me and probably the same amount will disagree. I am talking about the likes of the first meeting between Roy Jones and Antonio Tarver, Jones looked poor and was totally outworked but got the decision, I have never spoken to one person that thinks he won that fight, or even that it was close.
As I have said something needs to be changed but what ? Someone will have the answer, but we need to come up with something as it is only getting worse, and boxing is losing out because of it and as a result losing a lot of fans.
