Chisora Robbed

[bripez]

I didn't see the fight, but have just read FW's comments on the BC News site where he is demanding a rematch to this travesty.

You really must feel sorry for this promoter - to send his boxer to another country in good faith only to see the home fighter get the decision must be very disappointing to say the least.

I for one certainly hope that these overseas judges are hauled over the coals to prevent such an injustice ever happening to an FW fighter ever again.

[Tommy Gunn13]

I didn't see the fight, but have just read FW's comments on the BC News site where he is demanding a rematch to this travesty.

You really must feel sorry for this promoter - to send his boxer to another country in good faith only to see the home fighter get the decision must be very disappointing to say the least.

I for one certainly hope that these overseas judges are hauled over the coals to prevent such an injustice ever happening to an FW fighter ever again.

[Camcas]

I had Helenius a narrow winner but am assuming I’m the sole person along with that Gareth Davies guy who went against ‘Del Boy’? It was there for him to win. I don’t agree that showboating loses you the round but if you have the energy to piss about for a few secs then you have it to throw a few shots. Chisora did well, I just felt that he didn’t press his advantages as often as he could do and that Helenius created the impression of forcing Dereck into a shell once or twice. We know that Dereck is mad, the judges don’t and EBU judges historically go for what they consider to be clean shots and a rough notion of accuracy – I think that some of Dereck’s work was sloppy and cost him crucial rounds.

Good fight, though. Wouldn’t mind seeing a rematch.

Dang, what am I saying. ROBBERY!! This type of thing would never happen here in the UK (where we were only two rounds away from Prince Arron scoring a SD win in a fight that he lost by a landslide). We don’t do decision robberies over here, we usually just jump in and stop the poor sods as soon as we get the opportunity.

As for the ref, he was a pain but eased off and I think he actually took a shine to Chisora so didn't take any points away, as he could have done, wrongly in my view, due to the amount of warnings he gave out, again some of these were wrong.

What was your scorecard?? This should be good

[Trouble]

I had Chisora winning by 8-4 and the 4 to Helenius was generous.
Boxing better wake up or its over. The decision was almost British like. Now we know how overseas fighters feel when thye get ripped off/stopped early in a British ring.

[jamesmcdonnell]

promoters

Doing what? Threatening not to get them more work if they don't get the wanted result?

It's not hard to believe promoters look after certain judges more than others. These decisions happen everywhere though.

Its the worst kept secret in boxing. Promoters effectively pay the wages for all the officials, it is part of the cost of promoting the event that the promoter must bear.

Thus, any promoter worth his salt, knows it is worth well looking after the officials, and giving them a nice cushy hotel etc, so that subconsciously at the very least, it is not in their interests to find against the home fighter.

[Dioufy]

Meh. I don't feel bad for Derek. As far as I am concerned he robbed us fans of an all-time domestically great fight because he didn't lay off the hamburgers. I waited months for Fury vs. Chisora and that melon let everyone down. It'll take a long time before I forgive that.

He had bigger tits than my mam that night.

[Finn]

Meh. I don't feel bad for Derek. As far as I am concerned he robbed us fans of an all-time domestically great fight because he didn't lay off the hamburgers. I waited months for Fury vs. Chisora and that melon let everyone down. It'll take a long time before I forgive that.

He had bigger tits than my mam that night.

Ah give the guy a break he had just done 2 full training camps expecting to fight wlad and ended up wasting his time only to be offered Fury next, the guy was probably fed up of training and Furys a bit of a come down from wlad - how the hell do you motivate yourself.

[loaded_gloves]

This is a work of comic genius:

I didn't see the fight, but have just read FW's comments on the BC News site where he is demanding a rematch to this travesty.

You really must feel sorry for this promoter - to send his boxer to another country in good faith only to see the home fighter get the decision must be very disappointing to say the least.

I for one certainly hope that these overseas judges are hauled over the coals to prevent such an injustice ever happening to an FW fighter ever again.

[Dioufy]

Meh. I don't feel bad for Derek. As far as I am concerned he robbed us fans of an all-time domestically great fight because he didn't lay off the hamburgers. I waited months for Fury vs. Chisora and that melon let everyone down. It'll take a long time before I forgive that.

He had bigger tits than my mam that night.

Ah give the guy a break he had just done 2 full training camps expecting to fight wlad and ended up wasting his time only to be offered Fury next, the guy was probably fed up of training and Furys a bit of a come down from wlad - how the hell do you motivate yourself.

Two aborted attempts at Wlad does not constitute spending 6 hours a day in KFC. Yes, he must've been devastated but the Fury fight was massive. He needed to train and eat properly for 9 weeks - for a hefty wage. No justification for him coming to the ring looking like Barry White.

[loaded_gloves]

If Barry White were alive today he would be an instant Top 10 heavyweight in this era. And he'd have followed through on Chisora's threats to 'make love' to Helenius.

[Dioufy]

Chisora did well in the first 4 rounds against Fury too - even shaking him up in that 2nd round. He then suddenly tired; I guess that's what happens when you come to the ring carry 2 stone of excessive fat. I hope he lives to regret that fight because Fury was there for the taking.

And if he'd have won that he'd not had to have taken a dodgy fight in another man's country.

[Finn]

Meh. I don't feel bad for Derek. As far as I am concerned he robbed us fans of an all-time domestically great fight because he didn't lay off the hamburgers. I waited months for Fury vs. Chisora and that melon let everyone down. It'll take a long time before I forgive that.

He had bigger tits than my mam that night.

Ah give the guy a break he had just done 2 full training camps expecting to fight wlad and ended up wasting his time only to be offered Fury next, the guy was probably fed up of training and Furys a bit of a come down from wlad - how the hell do you motivate yourself.

Two aborted attempts at Wlad does not constitute spending 6 hours a day in KFC. Yes, he must've been devastated but the Fury fight was massive. He needed to train and eat properly for 9 weeks - for a hefty wage. No justification for him coming to the ring looking like Barry White.

Im not saying i agree with it but i understand why he must have lost motivation.

[SAPFO]

So where do we rate Del Boy now then? His stock has risen, if not his rating. Wlad going to give him a crack? Chisora would be all over him. Wlad would not be comfortable that's for sure.

[crusader]

Every half decent opponent would supposedly be 'all over' a Klitschko if given a chance.

[crusader]

Official scorecards. Note the ref's (I think it's the ref's) comment that 'the challenger controlled the fight and at least deserved a draw.

[Quixall]

I had Helenius a narrow winner but am assuming I’m the sole person along with that Gareth Davies guy who went against ‘Del Boy’? It was there for him to win. I don’t agree that showboating loses you the round but if you have the energy to piss about for a few secs then you have it to throw a few shots. Chisora did well, I just felt that he didn’t press his advantages as often as he could do and that Helenius created the impression of forcing Dereck into a shell once or twice. We know that Dereck is mad, the judges don’t and EBU judges historically go for what they consider to be clean shots and a rough notion of accuracy – I think that some of Dereck’s work was sloppy and cost him crucial rounds.

Good fight, though. Wouldn’t mind seeing a rematch.

Dang, what am I saying. ROBBERY!! This type of thing would never happen here in the UK (where we were only two rounds away from Prince Arron scoring a SD win in a fight that he lost by a landslide). We don’t do decision robberies over here, we usually just jump in and stop the poor sods as soon as we get the opportunity.

As for the ref, he was a pain but eased off and I think he actually took a shine to Chisora so didn't take any points away, as he could have done, wrongly in my view, due to the amount of warnings he gave out, again some of these were wrong.

What was your scorecard?? This should be good

115-113 for Helenius.

People can cry robbery all week, or maybe for 3-4 days ahead of the next scheduled ‘robbery’, and blame the officials or they can look at three recent fights that have raised this cry on the continent, Sturm-Macklin/Murray and Helenius-Chisora, and look for a scoring pattern that explains the cards without knee jerk accusations and/or just dropping links to point stats which may or may not be 100% correct.

Murray, Macklin and Chisora, to an extent, all fought similar fights, body work was a big factor and there is every sign it gets ignored overseas, and all three lost out on the cards, Martin got a draw but no belt, but the guys who used straight, often sharper, shots and lots of left hand work won the fight. Judges in EBU fights also show the same preferences so there is a pattern on the continent, clearly.

Is it beyond the realms of possibility for British fighters to study these fights, work out what the judges are looking for and tailor their approach accordingly? I know you will say they shouldn’t have to, but then again Premier teams shouldn’t have to change the way they play week in and week out when travelling to Europe, after all our league, and therefore style of play, is the ‘best in the world’ so why do the likes of United, Chelsea etc. feel the need to adapt their play in Euro game? Because they want to win.

As for continental ‘robberies’, at least you can see a pattern and potential reasons for this type of thing abroad due to different applications of the principles of scoring. The biggest outcry this weekend should focus on Phil Edwards giving Prince Arron a share of the Rose fight. Judging on the continent can at least be understood if you open your mind a little, recent British cards/decisions are inexplicable in the main and no alleged foreign ‘robbery’ is ever going to match Terry O’Connor’s Fury-McDermott card, not the result, just the card, and there have been some incredibly dodgy stoppages here also.

Us UK based fans are pure thoroughbred hypocrites. We’ve whinged about refs arbitrating fights for ages, we campaigned, or moaned, for a change in this and guess what -- there’s a thread on here that features the Helenius-Chisora scorecards and what we presume is a comment from the ref arguing for a draw. Hey presto, suddenly a non-scoring ref is the voice of reason, the beacon of truth and yet this same ref showed himself to be pretty incompetent during the fight in the minds of many (not me, I thought he did OK).

So what is it? Is the ref incompetent as a ref but a wise old head when it comes to summaring the fight in one line, where he refers to it as a draw BTW or is he so overly competent that he both reffed and scored the fight to perfection?

Some good points there and i would agree with you, in respect of European officials scoring a fight differently and fighters being aware that if this is a constant pattern off events, they may have to adapt there fighting styles. However, i also think that in order to win on the continent by a decision, that decision will have to be of a wide margin, because i can still see the judges awarding a close fight to either the home fighter or the holder of a belt. In other words, only a landslide unanimous decision on the part of the foriegn fighter will secure a victory outside of a knock out. I also think that in Helenius' case, officials were not going to de-rail the lucrative train ride to one of the Klitschko's, so any close fight in those circumstances will affect the outcome. I agree in principle with what you are saying, but it's not like Chisora's punches were not recognised at all, because the scorecards were quite narrow either way and yet he still lost that split decision. If the judges had not recognised those body punches at all, the scorecards would have been wider, which brings me back to my point earlier, that in order to win on the continent you have to out punch and LOOK LIKE your out punching the other guy from the 1st bell to the last. In other words i don't think your comments, if taken onboard, would make any significant difference.

[Quixall]

115-113 for Helenius.

People can cry robbery all week, or maybe for 3-4 days ahead of the next scheduled ‘robbery’, and blame the officials or they can look at three recent fights that have raised this cry on the continent, Sturm-Macklin/Murray and Helenius-Chisora, and look for a scoring pattern that explains the cards without knee jerk accusations and/or just dropping links to point stats which may or may not be 100% correct.

Murray, Macklin and Chisora, to an extent, all fought similar fights, body work was a big factor and there is every sign it gets ignored overseas, and all three lost out on the cards, Martin got a draw but no belt, but the guys who used straight, often sharper, shots and lots of left hand work won the fight. Judges in EBU fights also show the same preferences so there is a pattern on the continent, clearly.

Is it beyond the realms of possibility for British fighters to study these fights, work out what the judges are looking for and tailor their approach accordingly? I know you will say they shouldn’t have to, but then again Premier teams shouldn’t have to change the way they play week in and week out when travelling to Europe, after all our league, and therefore style of play, is the ‘best in the world’ so why do the likes of United, Chelsea etc. feel the need to adapt their play in Euro game? Because they want to win.

As for continental ‘robberies’, at least you can see a pattern and potential reasons for this type of thing abroad due to different applications of the principles of scoring. The biggest outcry this weekend should focus on Phil Edwards giving Prince Arron a share of the Rose fight. Judging on the continent can at least be understood if you open your mind a little, recent British cards/decisions are inexplicable in the main and no alleged foreign ‘robbery’ is ever going to match Terry O’Connor’s Fury-McDermott card, not the result, just the card, and there have been some incredibly dodgy stoppages here also.

Us UK based fans are pure thoroughbred hypocrites. We’ve whinged about refs arbitrating fights for ages, we campaigned, or moaned, for a change in this and guess what -- there’s a thread on here that features the Helenius-Chisora scorecards and what we presume is a comment from the ref arguing for a draw. Hey presto, suddenly a non-scoring ref is the voice of reason, the beacon of truth and yet this same ref showed himself to be pretty incompetent during the fight in the minds of many (not me, I thought he did OK).

So what is it? Is the ref incompetent as a ref but a wise old head when it comes to summaring the fight in one line, where he refers to it as a draw BTW or is he so overly competent that he both reffed and scored the fight to perfection?

Some good points there and i would agree with you, in respect of European officials scoring a fight differently and fighters being aware that if this is a constant pattern off events, they may have to adapt there fighting styles. However, i also think that in order to win on the continent by a decision, that decision will have to be of a wide margin, because i can still see the judges awarding a close fight to either the home fighter or the holder of a belt. In other words, only a landslide unanimous decision on the part of the foriegn fighter will secure a victory outside of a knock out. I also think that in Helenius' case, officials were not going to de-rail the lucrative train ride to one of the Klitschko's, so any close fight in those circumstances will affect the outcome. I agree in principle with what you are saying, but it's not like Chisora's punches were not recognised at all, because the scorecards were quite narrow either way and yet he still lost that split decision. If the judges had not recognised those body punches at all, the scorecards would have been wider, which brings me back to my point earlier, that in order to win on the continent you have to out punch and LOOK LIKE your out punching the other guy from the 1st bell to the last. In other words i don't think your comments, if taken onboard, would make any significant difference.

So if you have to look like your out punching the other guy Chisora should have won because this is how it appeared, no? Same for Macklin/Murray-Sturm? They looked to be out working the other guy but lost, so manybe you got a bit mixed yp there. If you take that approach on the continent you won’t get the decision, it has been tried and hasn’t worked. Ditto for scoring a landslide win, many on here had it a landslide for Chisora but he didn’t get the decision so why was that? By your fight winning criteria Dereck should have won, he didn’t so there must be more to it.

As for the officials not wanting to derail Helenius. So what about Leszek Jankowiak going for Chisora? Was he left out of the fix in order to make it look good? This is hardly smart, what if another judge made a mistake and turned in a drawn card. Bang goes the win for the hometown boy. Or is Leszek a wildcard judge as shown by him scoring a fight against Bienas (who was later ‘robbed’ of the chance to continue fighting Vs Brook here in the UK) a while back?

Judges are human beings scoring a live fight on a round by round basis, no stats, no fellow posters to draw from. If a fighter starts off like a rocket, Macklin-Sturm, then his pace dips what do the judges do? Consult Compbox to see how much he’s slowed down? In most cases they’ll probably place more emphasis on the opponent when this happens has one guy has gone from a huge output to a lesser one, looks like he has slowed and is making less of an impression in their eyes.

As for the fight itself, a disagreement on the cards across a couple of rounds decided the outcome, maybe it came down to what the judges saw and favoured in those split rounds rather than a conspiracy against Chisora.

Whatever your beliefs crying ‘robbery’ over and over doesn’t really do anyone any good as it kills debate. Plus there’ll be another ‘robbery’ at some point this weekend and attention will switch to that. Anyone remember the ‘Justice for Obodai Sai’ movement that last, what, two news articles and a few threads?

The most interesting thing about the issue of robberies is that the apex of the criticism and complaining seems to come on a Monday, where we’re all back in work after the weekend’s action, bored out or nuts and looking to kick start the week.

As I keep on saying, the more often we cry ‘robbery’ the more we rob, pun intended, the word of its meaning. A few more months of this and we might as well just shout ‘lemon flavoured blancmange’ in the wake of every fight that goes the distance.

It's one of those issues that will run and run and no doubt bias comes into the mixing, as is perhaps the case with Chisora. One thing that i did think when watching the fight was that Chisora's punches connected a lot with Helenius' gloves and i'm not sure how much credence was given to him for taking the fight to Hellenius. You say about the individual judges being human etc, just trying to judge a fight to the best of their abilities, but each judge isn't stupid, they know what is at stake for either fighter, in this case Helenius and i'm sure that when rounds are close there will be a tendancy to score the round for the home fighter. This panned out in the Chisora fight, because although it was close on the scorecards, two judges out of the three went for Helenius, no doubt because they scored the close rounds to Helenius due to a slight bias for the home fighter. Your argument that it is down to how fighters approach European based fights and that this must be the case because it keeps happenning, can equally be explained by judges being conservative towards the home fighter in close rounds, meaning that each judge will likely reach the same conclusions if the safe option on close rounds is to opt for the home fighter. The fact that it happens a lot is perhaps a combination of athe away fighters approach to the fight and the Euro judges natural bias towards the home fighter, current belt holder or prospective title challenger. All the main promotor has to say is "If in doubt score it for the home side", but the reality is that most experienced judges know what is expected of them in such situations. Chisora didn't win by a landslide and you have a point that it is not a robbery, but i thought he edged what was a close fight at times.

[Quixall]

So if you have to look like your out punching the other guy Chisora should have won because this is how it appeared, no? Same for Macklin/Murray-Sturm? They looked to be out working the other guy but lost, so manybe you got a bit mixed yp there. If you take that approach on the continent you won’t get the decision, it has been tried and hasn’t worked. Ditto for scoring a landslide win, many on here had it a landslide for Chisora but he didn’t get the decision so why was that? By your fight winning criteria Dereck should have won, he didn’t so there must be more to it.

As for the officials not wanting to derail Helenius. So what about Leszek Jankowiak going for Chisora? Was he left out of the fix in order to make it look good? This is hardly smart, what if another judge made a mistake and turned in a drawn card. Bang goes the win for the hometown boy. Or is Leszek a wildcard judge as shown by him scoring a fight against Bienas (who was later ‘robbed’ of the chance to continue fighting Vs Brook here in the UK) a while back?

Judges are human beings scoring a live fight on a round by round basis, no stats, no fellow posters to draw from. If a fighter starts off like a rocket, Macklin-Sturm, then his pace dips what do the judges do? Consult Compbox to see how much he’s slowed down? In most cases they’ll probably place more emphasis on the opponent when this happens has one guy has gone from a huge output to a lesser one, looks like he has slowed and is making less of an impression in their eyes.

As for the fight itself, a disagreement on the cards across a couple of rounds decided the outcome, maybe it came down to what the judges saw and favoured in those split rounds rather than a conspiracy against Chisora.

Whatever your beliefs crying ‘robbery’ over and over doesn’t really do anyone any good as it kills debate. Plus there’ll be another ‘robbery’ at some point this weekend and attention will switch to that. Anyone remember the ‘Justice for Obodai Sai’ movement that last, what, two news articles and a few threads?

The most interesting thing about the issue of robberies is that the apex of the criticism and complaining seems to come on a Monday, where we’re all back in work after the weekend’s action, bored out or nuts and looking to kick start the week.

As I keep on saying, the more often we cry ‘robbery’ the more we rob, pun intended, the word of its meaning. A few more months of this and we might as well just shout ‘lemon flavoured blancmange’ in the wake of every fight that goes the distance.

It's one of those issues that will run and run and no doubt bias comes into the mixing, as is perhaps the case with Chisora. One thing that i did think when watching the fight was that Chisora's punches connected a lot with Helenius' gloves and i'm not sure how much credence was given to him for taking the fight to Hellenius. You say about the individual judges being human etc, just trying to judge a fight to the best of their abilities, but each judge isn't stupid, they know what is at stake for either fighter, in this case Helenius and i'm sure that when rounds are close there will be a tendancy to score the round for the home fighter. This panned out in the Chisora fight, because although it was close on the scorecards, two judges out of the three went for Helenius, no doubt because they scored the close rounds to Helenius due to a slight bias for the home fighter. Your argument that it is down to how fighters approach European based fights and that this must be the case because it keeps happenning, can equally be explained by judges being conservative towards the home fighter in close rounds, meaning that each judge will likely reach the same conclusions if the safe option on close rounds is to opt for the home fighter. The fact that it happens a lot is perhaps a combination of athe away fighters approach to the fight and the Euro judges natural bias towards the home fighter, current belt holder or prospective title challenger. All the main promotor has to say is "If in doubt score it for the home side", but the reality is that most experienced judges know what is expected of them in such situations. Chisora didn't win by a landslide and you have a point that it is not a robbery, but i thought he edged what was a close fight at times.

So what about the third judge? Surely he gave the close rounds to Chisora so what was his story? And the ref who went from hero to villain and apparently is a Manchurian Candidate double agent programmed to both disrupt Dereck’s fight and placate British fans by unofficially scoring it a draw.

I get what you are saying, and it was close, but one week the punch stats are crap as they point to a Manny win over Marquez, the next they’re top drawer because they seemingly support two British wins.

I’ve seen a few ‘Scene users point to Dereck’s greater percentage of power shots. Everyone knows that a ‘power’ blow is anything other than a jab so a tap to the stomach which is put out to set up a head shot can be scored as a power blow. I’m pretty sure they also score partially landed shots as well.

Punch stats are fun but they mean virtually nothing if a person doesn’t know how to interpret them.

I'll bet a pound to a pinch of shit that some of Michael Katsidis arm shots from the Burns fight found their way into his stats.

That Katsidis - Burns fight was a classic in that Katsidis looked to be the dominant fighter, yet all his punches were blocked, but some credit and scoring has to go towards him for trying to lead the fight towards Burns, though technically he was out worked by fewer punches thrown. My answer to the "third" judge, is that if you take my "home bias in close rounds" theory, then on average you will get the majority of judges going for the home fighter, but you will always get the odd judge who is perhaps more independant of thinking. In percentage terms 75% of the judges ruled for Helenius. It's not an exact science, but if a judge is well aware of his "situation" shall we say and is aware of the "if in doubt score it for the home fighter" in those close rounds, then a ratio of 2/3 of the judges going for the home fighter is about right. Difficult one to sort because as much as we would like it not to be, politics and finance will always come into these equations. Ps always good to dabte with you King G

[nobby_nobbins]

The referee wasn't trying to "appease British fans" with his comments on the scorecard. He was desperately trying to show how impartial he was in the hope of warding off criticism for his repeated, unnecessary meddling when Chisora was on the attack.

[nobby_nobbins]

Well it's been a while since I've seen such a fussy referee. He even interrupted one of Chisora's attacks just to pull his shorts up. He wasn't so fussy when it came to Helenius holding though.

[earsjohn]

Why do Promoters appoint the judges? Surely this should be the job of the commission (BBBC, EBU, WBA, etc) with responsibility for fees and expenses met by the body and not those involved who have a financial interest in the outcome of the fight?

You wouldn't have Alex Ferguson selecting referees for Manchester United games (as much as he'd like to, I'm sure!), so why is it allowed in boxing?

[Finn]

Why do Promoters appoint the judges? Surely this should be the job of the commission (BBBC, EBU, WBA, etc) with responsibility for fees and expenses met by the body and not those involved who have a financial interest in the outcome of the fight?

You wouldn't have Alex Ferguson selecting referees for Manchester United games (as much as he'd like to, I'm sure!), so why is it allowed in boxing?

Thats the million dollar question. There should be a body of judges of which judges are selected for fights by some form of neutral approach and the same goes for refs. Should there really be a ref or judge from say the US or Britain involved with a fight that involves a fighter from that country in an international bout.