WBC overrules decision in Hope-Singwancha fight

[tobyh5]

"The August 29 clash in Hong Kong between former European middleweight champion Kerry “The Great” Hope and Thailand’s Petchsuriya Singwancha that ended in a draw has been changed by the WBC to a unanimous decision win for Hope.

“The original decision was quite simply the worst I’ve ever seen and by some distance,” said Hope’s co-manager Matt Clark. “Kerry Hope completely dominated his opponent from the opening bell and there’s no way on God’s green Earth that it was remotely competitive, let alone a draw. I launched a complaint with the WBC and provided them footage of the bout. Kerry has today received a letter from the President of the WBC, Mauricio Sulaiman, stating that the fight has been reviewed and upon review, the decision has been awarded to Hope. The committee reviewing the fight awarded it unanimously by a wide margin,” Clark said.

Hope belatedly claims the WBC Asian Boxing Council middleweight title. Judges Visuth Yingaupagarn and Pongpan Rattanasutorn have been suspended by the Asian Boxing Council and are being retrained."

From fightnews.com

Dangerous precedent being set to change a decision after a fight, and three weeks later too? How many other fights could be reversed? We see shocking decisions all the time but surely the end result, bad or not, should stand. Do we go back and change the Whittaker v Chavez one too?

[Boxerbeetle]

Hmmm, right decision for Hope but a very interesting precedent to set. If I was a high roller who had bet a load on a Mayweather UD against Canelo, I'd be howling for a review of that one.

[orbtastic]

I was going to say that is quite a bizarre precedent. I've seen fights reviewed and changed to a NC and a rematch mandated in some cases but to actually have someone watch it and re-score it, then change the actual decision is pretty out there.

I'm trying to think of the fight recently, maybe some years ago where it was scored by some officials re-watching it again but the actual decision wasn't changed. Maybe I'm thinking of Khan/Peterson?

[Boxerbeetle]

Jesus, just thought - better not tell George Groves, he'll be campaigning to overturn the results of both Froch fights & the Jack fight!

[ILikeBeer]

Jesus, just thought - better not tell George Groves, he'll be campaigning to overturn the results of both Froch fights & the Jack fight!

[Boxing Prospect]

I was going to say that is quite a bizarre precedent. I've seen fights reviewed and changed to a NC and a rematch mandated in some cases but to actually have someone watch it and re-score it, then change the actual decision is pretty out there.

I'm trying to think of the fight recently, maybe some years ago where it was scored by some officials re-watching it again but the actual decision wasn't changed. Maybe I'm thinking of Khan/Peterson?

Bradley Vs Pacquiao?

Interestingly the WBC should probably have followed their own precedent set recently from the Mariana Juarez Vs Vanesa Lorena Taborda bout. That saw the bout being changed to an NC/ND and they ordered a rematch, think they banned half the judges for that one as well. So like you said, a bizarre move.

[Stuarty]

Jesus, just thought - better not tell George Groves, he'll be campaigning to overturn the results of both Froch fights & the Jack fight!

The fix is in

[olij999]

The only time I can recall a second panel of judges scoring a fight was at the 1984 Olympics, where if the judges were split 3-2, the second panel then ruled on it, as if the second panel somehow had a better understanding of what had happened in the ring than the first. And that was just scoring it at the same time, not rescoring it later. PS - there's a great article at http://www.BS.com/forums/showt ... p?t=197118 on how the 1984 stuff affected the 1988 Olympics.

The Hope case seems a very dangerous precedent. Now anyone with a gripe about scoring in a WBC fight will be pushing hard to have it overturned, and rather than knowing the result when the decision is announced, you'll only be certain about the result some weeks later, when the time to lodge an appeal to the WBC has passed or when the WBC have rejected or upheld the original decision. What will bookies do? Pay out on the result as announced, or wait? Will the other governing bodies follow suit - what would the WBA have done about Rios-Abril, for example? And where do they see the line between "so bad it will be reviewed" and "just not quite how we saw it"? To even answer that question, you have to watch the fight first and score it, so it becomes chicken and egg.

To me, the way to deal with thoroughly bad judging is to have regular performance reviews for all judges who judge title fights and demote/remove/retrain the ones who perform badly regularly - answer is not to try to rewrite history after the event, but to try to do more to prevent it happening in the first place.

[Graham Houston]

Hmmm, right decision for Hope but a very interesting precedent to set. If I was a high roller who had bet a load on a Mayweather UD against Canelo, I'd be howling for a review of that one.

The betting companies (sportsbooks, bookmakers) pay out on the result given ON THE NIGHT. If a verdict is changed due to, say, a scorecard tabulation error, and the error is discovered that same night (as with the first Brodie vs In-jin Chi contest) then all is well -- depending on the wager that was made, of course; anyone who bet on the draw in the Brodie vs In-Jin fight would have been very pleased that an error was discovered that same night. If the error isn't spotted until the next day, or later (as I believe happened in the Ike Quartey vs Jose Luis Lopez bout) then the final grading of the wager will be at the discretion of the sportsbook/bookmaker. If more than 24 hours elapses, though, I think it's accurate to say that the verdict given on the night will stand as regards wagering purposes. Changing a decision does set a dangerous precedent -- except it's not really a precedent, happened in the famous Joey Giardello vs Billy Graham fight at Madison Square Garden in 1952. That one led to legal proceedings.

[olij999]

Hmmm, right decision for Hope but a very interesting precedent to set. If I was a high roller who had bet a load on a Mayweather UD against Canelo, I'd be howling for a review of that one.

The betting companies (sportsbooks, bookmakers) pay out on the result given ON THE NIGHT. If a verdict is changed due to, say, a scorecard tabulation error, and the error is discovered that same night (as with the first Brodie vs In-jin Chi contest) then all is well -- depending on the wager that was made, of course; anyone who bet on the draw in the Brodie vs In-Jin fight would have been very pleased that an error was discovered that same night. If the error isn't spotted until the next day, or later (as I believe happened in the Ike Quartey vs Jose Luis Lopez bout) then the final grading of the wager will be at the discretion of the sportsbook/bookmaker. If more than 24 hours elapses, though, I think it's accurate to say that the verdict given on the night will stand as regards wagering purposes. Changing a decision does set a dangerous precedent -- except it's not really a precedent, happened in the famous Joey Giardello vs Billy Graham fight at Madison Square Garden in 1952. That one led to legal proceedings.

Thanks Graham - very interesting and helpful. Read about Giardello v Graham ages ago, but had completely forgotten about it. Though, as a challenge (which I can't meet!), will you be able to find another 9 to do a "10 fights where the scoring was changed afterwards" kind of feature in BM? There are a few in the amateurs such as Errol Spence's one at the 2012 Olympics, but I'm struggling to think of pro fights, apart from those where points decisions become NCs due to drug test failures.

[Graham Houston]

Hmmm, right decision for Hope but a very interesting precedent to set. If I was a high roller who had bet a load on a Mayweather UD against Canelo, I'd be howling for a review of that one.

The betting companies (sportsbooks, bookmakers) pay out on the result given ON THE NIGHT. If a verdict is changed due to, say, a scorecard tabulation error, and the error is discovered that same night (as with the first Brodie vs In-jin Chi contest) then all is well -- depending on the wager that was made, of course; anyone who bet on the draw in the Brodie vs In-Jin fight would have been very pleased that an error was discovered that same night. If the error isn't spotted until the next day, or later (as I believe happened in the Ike Quartey vs Jose Luis Lopez bout) then the final grading of the wager will be at the discretion of the sportsbook/bookmaker. If more than 24 hours elapses, though, I think it's accurate to say that the verdict given on the night will stand as regards wagering purposes. Changing a decision does set a dangerous precedent -- except it's not really a precedent, happened in the famous Joey Giardello vs Billy Graham fight at Madison Square Garden in 1952. That one led to legal proceedings.

Thanks Graham - very interesting and helpful. Read about Giardello v Graham ages ago, but had completely forgotten about it. Though, as a challenge (which I can't meet!), will you be able to find another 9 to do a "10 fights where the scoring was changed afterwards" kind of feature in BM? There are a few in the amateurs such as Errol Spence's one at the 2012 Olympics, but I'm struggling to think of pro fights, apart from those where points decisions become NCs due to drug test failures.

There have been quite a few. Without checking, just off the top of my head: Winky Wright vs Harry Simon, Stevie Johnson vs J. L. Castillo II, Nelson-Leija (first fight), Barrera vs Juarez (first fight). It wasn't a matter of scoring being changed in these bouts but where a tabulation error was spotted later. (That is, a judge's score being entered incorrectly -- a 10-10 round being incorrectly tabulated as 10-9, say, or a deduction of a point not being factored into the scoring.) ... The scorecards were tabulated incorrectly for Carbajal-Chiquita Gonzalez II, but it didn't affect the actual result. My pal Jack Obermayer spotted the error and raised it at the post-fight press conference and I remember Bob Arum not saying anything but rolling his eyes as if to say: "Can't anyone get anything right these days!" .. The time of the stoppage in M.A. Barrera vs Eddie Croft was wrongly announced by Michael Buffer as "38 seconds of round seven". This was a serious error as far as players (gamblers) were concerned as the "over/under" was six and a half rounds. It wasn't Buffer's error -- a clerical staff member misheard the timekeeper and an incorrect stoppage time was passed on to Buffer. The actual stoppage time was 1:38. At the Caesars Palace sportsbook, the sharp managers were watching the fight on TV and realised immediately (from the on-screen clock) that the seventh round had lasted more than 38 seconds. So, they put a hold on all payouts until the Nevada commission verified the stoppage time. People who wager on sporting events are in the habit of tearing up or throwing away their losing betting tickets. I don't want to think of all the people who had bet on the "over 6.5" rounds in the Barrera vs Croft fight discarding or ripping up their tickets, and how they must have felt on learning their "losing" bet was a winner.

[Counter-puncher]

Great post, thanks

[bripez]

Some good info on this thread.

As with the others, I am surprised at this move. Not sure how they will cope with the number of appeals in the future.

[grub]

Just a thought, but the WBC were sanctioning a title fought for on the show. However surely the bout (and whole show) were sanctioned by a national boxing commission? Does the WBC have this kind of power to dictate the actual result (not just the destination of the title) over the commission (or have the commission agreed as well)?

Put another way, in a BBBoC sanctioned fight for a WBC title, who has 'final say' on the official result? I'd have thought it would be the BBBoC.

[bripez]

Just a thought, but the WBC were sanctioning a title fought for on the show. However surely the bout (and whole show) were sanctioned by a national boxing commission? Does the WBC have this kind of power to dictate the actual result (not just the destination of the title) over the commission (or have the commission agreed as well)?

Put another way, in a BBBoC sanctioned fight for a WBC title, who has 'final say' on the official result? I'd have thought it would be the BBBoC.

Interesting question - I guess it is one of them where nobody knows because it has never happened before.

Actually, are the WBC actually able to do this?

What if the sanctioning body have a revue and disagree with the WBC ? - can they over rule the WBC and re- instate the original decision?

Who has the final say?

If they can't do it then why nit? - it would be interesting to hear if there is a definitive rule on this.

[Cholo_cws]

I heard they were also about to review the draw given in Whitaker-Chavez Snr

[Boxing Prospect]

The sanctioning body was....something like the Hong Kong Professional Boxing Federation, without trying to massively downplay them I suspect the WBC won't care much for their opinion, or will kindly "nudge" them into agreeing. The bigger question, for me, is whether the WBC are actually saying their own judges aren't good enough...and if that's the case, what will they do about it?

[tobyh5]

I heard they were also about to review the draw given in Whitaker-Chavez Snr

Did you just use the same sarcastic example that I did in the OP?

smh

[Cholo_cws]

I heard they were also about to review the draw given in Whitaker-Chavez Snr

Did you just use the same sarcastic example that I did in the OP?

smh

Oops, I somehow missed that, honest

[CharlesListon]

Just a thought, but the WBC were sanctioning a title fought for on the show. However surely the bout (and whole show) were sanctioned by a national boxing commission? Does the WBC have this kind of power to dictate the actual result (not just the destination of the title) over the commission (or have the commission agreed as well)?

Put another way, in a BBBoC sanctioned fight for a WBC title, who has 'final say' on the official result? I'd have thought it would be the BBBoC.

Interesting question - I guess it is one of them where nobody knows because it has never happened before.

Actually, are the WBC actually able to do this?

What if the sanctioning body have a revue and disagree with the WBC ? - can they over rule the WBC and re- instate the original decision?

Who has the final say?

If they can't do it then why nit? - it would be interesting to hear if there is a definitive rule on this.

The way it would work is that whilst the BBBofC sanction the event, it's supervised by the WBC and its the WBC who appoint the judges and the referee. Thats why those officials wear the badges of the relevant world body.
It gets complicated because the BBBofC are involved in the running of the event and provide a lot of the other officials, such as Inspector and timekeeper and doctors, so there is a fair amount of cooperation goes on between the world body and whatever territory is hosting the event. However, ultimately it's the world bodies event and they have the final say.

[Loftgroov]

I'm surprised the IOC never reversed Roy Jones v Park Si-Hun in 1988.

Those judges also needed to be "retrained"...