BoxRec

"Mauricio Sulaiman column: Replays, judging/scoring, 30-sec signal, social media" (Author: Mauricio Sulaiman - WBC President)

Here are some key points from Mauricio Sulaiman's article:

Instant Replays:

"The WBC will continue to work diligently to establish it and use it in WBC sanctioned events, and invite all organizations and all local jurisdictions to implement the use of Instant Replay in any form."

Judges Scoring System:

"The WBC invented and introduced the 10-point Must System... It has served as a fair solution, but it is now time to implement changes to address the current problematic and evident failures of the system..."

"The idea is to score the rounds by providing a much wider range for officials to score, selecting such score “by concept” (slight, moderate, absolute), and that way having officials be able to use 10-10 for very close rounds, 10-9 for moderate advantage, and 10-8 for absolute domination. Total domination, even without knockdown, can be scored 10-8."

"A simple example would be to compare rounds 1 and 12 of the Badou Jack vs. James DeGale fight. Both were scored 10-8 due to the knockdowns, but those rounds were completly different and should not have been scored the same. But that is the current system."

Open Scoring After the 4th & 8th Rounds:

"The WBC introduced the announcement of the official scores after the fourth and eighth rounds, having the last four rounds with drama and uncertainty for the end result. In 10 years, the results have been fantastic..."

"Still some local jurisdictions will not even consider using it as a test trial...Why not try it in the USA or in the UK?"

Noise Cancelling Headphones for Judges:

"The WBC began in 2016 a pilot program to have judges wear noise-cancelling headphones, which aid in concentration and prevent the influence of loud crowds or nearby comments... We will continue to use them, and hopefully local commissions will begin to open up to the idea and try things out."

Thoughts?

Anything that works remotely will help and we could have the fraud squad on stand by for any judge that lets just say looks suspect from the top to the bottom we need to weed out these corrupt and/or incompetent boxing official's and i'm serious the fraud squad and the interviewing room's need to be part of the promotion introduce and name the head officer on duty that night from the fraud squad just like the ref/judge's and doctor's fighter's are introduced

Absolutely love everything Sulaiman is suggesting. The only one that i'm not a huge fan of is the open scoring but I could be persuaded. Maybe I dislike it because the fights that i've seen with open scoring were awful and announcers got confused every time and screwed it all up for the viewers. So not dead set on it. I definitely think that would improve the action in the championship rounds no matter what.

Instant Replay is a must. If used effectively, we can finally make these referee's accountable for their calls. Penalty infractions like low blows can be verified. Knockdowns. What caused a cut. IR does not have to stop the action, it could happen in real time during the fight by ringside officials. Love it. Best idea yet. We've all been talking about this for years on this site.

Just imagine that Juventus will pay to judges in his game against Inter. Who will win? In professional boxing it is so. Home promoter pays judges. WBC is far from being FIFA or AIBA.

All these measures will not help. Contrary it will give the opportunity to the judge to score 10:9 round with KD justifying that knocked downed boxer was better.

I'll give it to him, Mauricio seems to at least outwardly have the best interests of the sport at heart, unlike his dad who was a transparently corrupt turd.

The fact that he's been willing to name other ABC champs as WBC mandatories is a good thing as well. That was pretty much unheard of until he started doing it.

I like a lot of it.

But I'll never like open scoring

I don't think the scoring system needs to be changed. When it is used by competent judges who are not corrupt, the system works. The problem is the judges.

I think it needs rounds scored like this.

10-9 for a standard round where it was clear one boxer won the round.
10-8 for a standard round where it was clear a boxer won the round and there was a knock down
10-10 for an absolute even round where it was impossible to separate the boxers
10-9.5 for a round that was marginally one
10-8.5 for a round where a boxer was knocked down and it was very even without the knockdown or the knocked down boxer was ahead
10-7 for a round totally dominant involving 2 knockdowns
10-6 for a round totally dominant involving 3 knockdowns

I think the problem with judging is sometimes you have 2000 people cheering for one fighter and nobody cheering for the other. It is natural to side with the house fighter.

Lennox wrote:I think it needs rounds scored like this.

10-9 for a standard round where it was clear one boxer won the round.
10-8 for a standard round where it was clear a boxer won the round and there was a knock down
10-10 for an absolute even round where it was impossible to separate the boxers
10-9.5 for a round that was marginally one
10-8.5 for a round where a boxer was knocked down and it was very even without the knockdown or the knocked down boxer was ahead
10-7 for a round totally dominant involving 2 knockdowns
10-6 for a round totally dominant involving 3 knockdowns

I think the problem with judging is sometimes you have 2000 people cheering for one fighter and nobody cheering for the other. It is natural to side with the house fighter.

- I see no evidence of higher order thinking. The 10-8 round was a farce designed by a dirty business to fleece their fans in the gaming houses. 90% or more of the rounds are scored 10-9, a scrawny one point difference, meaning 19 of the points are completely wasted, offering no relevance other than to the half wit judges who often can't even correctly score whole grade school numbers much less half points. It's also a negative assessment where the fighter loses the round, not wins it, completely ass backwards.

KISS scoring for simpletons of boxing, Keep It Simple Stupid: Fighter earns one point for every KD, and every round won. No more 10-8 rounds for a fighter beat to hell only to luck out on a poorly called flash KD. Any fouls assessed are one point to the fighter fouled. Winning fighters have to actually win points. More even 0-0 rounds when their is no discernible difference between the fighters to eliminate those hometown scores going to the hometown fighters. Every other sport have no score possessions and at bats. Just going through the motions is not even. Open scoring puts pressure on the fighters and judges as it should be so the fans can see and anticipate the progress of the fight or start the booing if they disagree.

Finally, no more of these sanitized cumulative scorecards released for public perusal without context. Time for the public to see all the raw mistakes these doltish judges make so we can see where the mistakes are corrected by the commissions before release to the public. In their biggest fight ever between Manny and TUE, what, $1/2 billion generated with the whole world watching, even the cumulative scorecard blew it with Manny in the winning red corner. Is it even possible to fix the stupid of boxing?

That anyone in a boxing ranking organization could hold such views as expressed pretty much disparages the legitimacy of those rankings, but at least the people generally agree boxing needs some major changes in how it conducts business as it's losing fans right and left because it's not seen as a legit sport any more.

The scoring system is insane... If you out-score your opponent 20 to 4 in a round with better punches, how does he lose only 10-8??? the score should be 10-2.

The current 10 point system is a de facto 2-point system for 95% of fights. It gives too much leeway to corrupt judges.. The way the system is now, an even or closely contested round is scored by judges 1 and 2 for Smith 10-9 -- because they want him to win.. The following round is won by Jones as he staggers Smith and drives him all over the ring in an obviously dominant round.. Judges 1 and 2 bite their lips and reluctantly score the round 10-9 for Jones, wishing there were some reason to justify giving the round to Smith. Then they'll mentally calculate how many more rounds Smith needs.

Also, if you hurt and stagger your opponent in a round,landing 6 or 7 punches, and he lands 6 or 7 arguably clean punches that don't do anything to you, you need to win the round 10-8 or better. That may be the best and most exciting round of the fight, and you made it that way---but certain judges will justify giving that round to your opponent thinking, "brilliant defense -- he barely nicked that one IMO" just so he can eventually win the fight.

Kalan wrote:The scoring system is insane... If you out-score your opponent 20 to 4 in a round with better punches, how does he lose only 10-8??? the score should be 10-2.

An absolutely insane theory. Pro boxing shouldn't go down the old amateur route. What happens if the fighter that only landed four punches hurts the feather-fisted fellow that landed twenty?

I like all of the implementations except open scoring, of course.

RScarf1 wrote:I don't think the scoring system needs to be changed. When it is used by competent judges who are not corrupt, the system works. The problem is the judges.

Noise canceling headphones would've prevented that travesty of judges giving the 10th to the wrong fighter in Kovalev-Ward, unless they were simply corrupt. These people clearly need help. It happens on nearly every card where Harold gives a quick rundown of the judges for a particular fight, citing their experience level, followed by "He's a great judge. He'll do a good job.", scores are then read and the exact opposite comes true. Never fails.

I do like the idea of noise-cancelling headphones; it's just too easy for judges to be persuaded by biased crowd reactions.

Blodhemn wrote:I like all of the implementations except open scoring, of course.

RScarf1 wrote:I don't think the scoring system needs to be changed. When it is used by competent judges who are not corrupt, the system works. The problem is the judges.

Noise canceling headphones would've prevented that travesty of judges giving the 10th to the wrong fighter in Kovalev-Ward, unless they were simply corrupt. These people clearly need help. It happens on nearly every card where Harold gives a quick rundown of the judges for a particular fight, citing their experience level, followed by "He's a great judge. He'll do a good job.", scores are then read and the exact opposite comes true. Never fails.

This. I really think five judges watching on CCTV is the best bet.

) Don't like open scoring. They use it in WBC fights here in Korea. Total buzz kill.
2) Headphones on judges is lame. Judges should be able to score regardless of crowd noise. I want the judge to hear the heavy shots and the grunting from body shots.

Ideally judges wouldn't be swayed by crowd noise, but humans are highly amenable to persuasion. I think cutting out the crowd influence is worth trying, even if it comes at the expense of hearing the ring noises.

I also think a lot of poor scoring goes beyond incompetence though. Something like 97-93 for Roc Nation Hooker over Perez is shady as fuckk.