The science behind scoring a 10-10 round and why it should be rare

[Ruthless-RKO]

By Tom Schreck

Every round in boxing is three minutes — 180 seconds of action, movement, and strategy. In those 180 seconds, it’s a judge’s job to analyze, compare, and decide who had the edge. Sometimes that’s easy. Sometimes it’s brutally difficult.

But it’s always the job.

Still, there are situations that tempt a judge to call a round even. Here are three of the most common:

Scenario 1: The Back-and-Forth Round
In a high action round where both fighters are trading shots at a furious pace, and the damage appears more or less equal, a 10-10 score can feel like a safe call.

Some judges argue that scoring these rounds even allows the more definitive rounds to stand out clearly, helping identify the rightful winner on the final cards.

I’m not convinced. And more importantly, that rationale doesn’t align with the rules of judging. Even in a back-and-forth brawl, the judge is tasked with identifying who had the edge —however slight.

Scenario 2: The Low-Action Round
Especially in the heavier divisions, rounds can devolve into lean-fests, clinch battles, or mutual agreements to conserve energy. Both fighters take a breather, and fans are left groaning.

Judges may be tempted to "toss" the round—score it even and wait for something meaningful to happen in the next one.

Again, that’s not judging. That’s deferring. A round is a round, whether it’s exciting or dreadful, and it still requires a winner.

Scenario 3: The Double Knockdown
If both fighters hit the canvas in the same round, some may think the round cancels itself out.

It doesn’t.

Knockdowns are important, but they’re just one piece of the puzzle. Judges still have to weigh clean punching, ring control, defense, and effective aggression across the entire round.

Even in a wild exchange of knockdowns, someone usually did just a little more.

So, what should a judge do?

Simple: Pay attention. Concentrate. Focus.

It’s not glamorous, but it’s the job. If a fighter does even 1% more—lands one more clean shot, controls the ring slightly better, dictates pace just a hair longer—then they’ve done enough to win the round.

Let’s be clear: even rounds are not illegal. But they should be extremely rare, used only when there is genuinely no way to separate the fighters using the four scoring criteria: clean punching, effective aggressiveness, ring generalship, and defense.

And that is almost never the case.

A judge’s role is not to watch the fight — it’s to judge it. If you can’t find a winner after three full minutes of professional combat, you may not be paying close enough attention — or you may be afraid to take a stand.

Take the first Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Durán fight in 1980. One judge scored five rounds even. In a 15-round bout, that’s a third of the fight left undecided. Some in the sport defend this approach, saying it allows only the most decisive rounds to count toward the final result.

But that logic doesn’t hold up.

Judges aren’t there to declare only the blowout rounds. They’re there to score every round. And when they score too many 10-10s, they don’t just abdicate their responsibility — they shift it to the other judges.

Close fights are often decided by razor-thin margins. Every point matters. Declining to make a call distorts the math and puts the outcome in someone else’s hands.

Of course, there are rare moments — truly rare — when two fighters land cleanly and evenly, control space in equal measure, defend each other flawlessly, and no edge can be found.

Fine. Use 10-10 then. But if it becomes a habit, that judge probably isn’t doing the job right.

Professional judging demands decisiveness, clarity and accountability. If you want to call fights at the highest level, you have to be willing to make tough calls in tough rounds—every single time.

In my 28 years of judging, covering over 625 fights and somewhere around 4,000 rounds, I’ve scored one round even.

I wish I hadn’t.

[Controversial]

Some rounds are a tie though, if you can’t split them then it’s a 10-10 round in my opinion. Most fans can’t score properly anyway and he sounds like one of them.

[joshj909]

Some rounds are a tie though, if you can’t split them then it’s a 10-10 round in my opinion. Most fans can’t score properly anyway and he sounds like one of them.

Yeah simple as that. Either neither of them did anything, landed 3 harmless punches each or they both returned a punch Everytime the other landed it. It happens way more often than people think. Sometimes one guy dominated the first half and the other dominated the second half just as evenly.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Some rounds are a tie though, if you can’t split them then it’s a 10-10 round in my opinion. Most fans can’t score properly anyway and he sounds like one of them.

he's a judge lol

[Ezzard]

As long as the result goes the right way...

[Controversial]

Some rounds are a tie though, if you can’t split them then it’s a 10-10 round in my opinion. Most fans can’t score properly anyway and he sounds like one of them.

he's a judge lol

Point proved lol

[margaret thatcher]

if he thinks giving an even round doesnt count as judging, i dont think he knows what judging means. which is worrying because he's a judge. a 10-10 is a viable option in pro boxing, hence you are still delivering a judgement on a round if you score it that way

there are some people like this who create this phony hypothetical issue that if 10-10s are used judges will all just score everything close even, but this is virtually never borne out. in regions where even rounds are normal, it's usually a round or a few at most, scores like 115-114, maybe a 116-114, and that reflects that there are often a few rounds that you cant really split. the infamous 120-119 card or whatever it was is exceptionally rare

so often the first round in particular will have eff all between the fighters

also what is his 'science' in this argument?

[Coco]

I think you should always try and find a winner.

However winning a round big then means the same as nicking a round.

Perhaps nicking a round should only BA half a point

[margaret thatcher]

I think you should always try and find a winner.

However winning a round big then means the same as nicking a round.

Perhaps nicking a round should only BA half a point

doesn't using an even round help with that problem to some extent?

whats a more accurate representation of a fight then you think

round 1: hardly anything to split them, feeling out. very little thrown, no notable lands. maybe each guy landed 3 or 4 shots. score fighter b since you have to pick someone

round 2: fighter a pounds fighter b, but no knockdown. 20-5 in connects. 10-9 fighter a

score: 20-19 fight a

OR

round 1: hardly anything to split them, feeling out. very little thrown, no notable lands. maybe each guy landed 3 or 4 shots. score fighter b since you have to pick someone

round 2: fighter a pounds fighter b, but no knockdown. 20-5 in connects. 10-9 fighter a

score: 19-19

[Coco]

I think you should always try and find a winner.

However winning a round big then means the same as nicking a round.

Perhaps nicking a round should only BA half a point

doesn't using an even round help with that problem to some extent?

whats a more accurate representation of a fight then you think

round 1: hardly anything to split them, feeling out. very little thrown, no notable lands. score it even.
round 2: fighter a pounds fighter b, but no knockdown. 10-9 fighter a

score: 20-19 fight a

OR

round 1: hardly anything to split them, feeling out. very little thrown, no notable lands. score fighter b since you have to pick someone

round 2: fighter a pounds fighter b, but no knockdown. 10-9 fighter a

score: 19-19

I think winning by the same point whether it is close or wide is the problem, not whether you find a winner or not

[margaret thatcher]

to me its the same issue though - a limitation on the options you have to use results in round by round scores not reflecting how competitive a fight really is. the more granular you can get, the closer you can match reality


if round 1 is super close, and hardly anything to split them, but round 2 is an ass whooping - we all know that the guy who gave the ass whooping got the better of it overall. but if we edge the first to the other guy, we get a draw. seems a bit off, but makes sense using nothing but 10-9s.

but if we use the even round for the first, we take away that possibility of a misleading card, and the guy who gave the whooping wins. you could also address this using half points or more liberal use of 10-8s, true, but then if youre for that i dont know why someone would logically be against 10-10 being an option

[gilgamesh]

There's only a few rounds I've ever scored even, and usually it was because neither fighter did much of anything. Nobody landed anything of note. Nobody even landed anything grazing or if they did, it was matched by their opponent. So you come out of the round with both fighters having landed 2 nothing shots on each other maybe.

What else would a round like that be except even?

At least 1 of the Chris Byrd vs Davarryl Williamson rounds were like that.

It felt like I had an even round in Vernon Forrest vs Shane Mosley 2 as well.

Both of those fights were as dull as it gets. You're doing the sport a service by even continuing to watch and care about a fight like that.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Thing is once you’ve scored it you can’t go back and re-score.

[Bobbyptsd]

Why can't an even round just be even? I see rounds I'd judge as even fairly often, so what's the problem?
I don't get why this would even be an issue. As the Iron Lady pointed out earlier, how is paying attention to a round and seeing it as even not judging it? I judged it as even. This makes it sound like the job of a judge is to "find" a winner, when as far as I'm aware, it isn't. It's simply to judge the round, hand in the score, judge the next one, hand that in etc. That gets counted up at the end and David Diamante tells us the result and I go to bed. The end. And yes RKO is right that you can't go back and re judge past rounds, but I don't see anyone suggesting that?
I think there should be MORE even rounds. Does that sound arbitrary? Well, to me it's just as arbitrary as saying there should be less.

[tigermoth87]

Some rounds are a tie though, if you can’t split them then it’s a 10-10 round in my opinion. Most fans can’t score properly anyway and he sounds like one of them.

he's a judge lol

Probably why we get such awful decisions in this generation of boxing then, like Haney beating Loma or Taylor beating Catt.

[Jimmy2025]

I'd not score boxing round by round if I was the King of the boxing world. If neither fighter gave up or was stopped, I'd simply decide at the end who I thought had done best overall.

[Old bones Ian]

I'm trying to remember the world title fight which one judge scored 120-119 , I seem to remember he was from the away boxers home country

[Coco]

I'm trying to remember the world title fight which one judge scored 120-119 , I seem to remember he was from the away boxers home country

I'm sure Johnny Nelson lost one of those in Brazil

[Old bones Ian]

I'm trying to remember the world title fight which one judge scored 120-119 , I seem to remember he was from the away boxers home country

I'm sure Johnny Nelson lost one of those in Brazil

Yes nice one , saved me an evening of searching .
Vs Adilson Rodrigues . I believe Johnny had stood Rodrigues on his head and lost the decision . Out of the 3 judges they scored adding up all the cards combined 23 out of the 36 rounds even !

[goose 5]

The writer fails to mention that one judge in the first Leonard-Duran bout actually scored 10 rounds even. 3-2-10 Duran.

[dookus]

10-10 is a perfectly valid way to see a round. I don't see why there should be an overriding emphasis on picking a winner. A forced judgement is more likely to be a bad one.

[margaret thatcher]

10-10 is a perfectly valid way to see a round. I don't see why there should be an overriding emphasis on picking a winner. A forced judgement is more likely to be a bad one.