11.04.06 – By Jonathan Reck: Boxing like other sports all over the world has its problems. Controversial scoring by judges have always been in the fight game. For some reason, they see the fight different than most everybody else watching at home and the people around ringside. Since the turn of the millennium, we have had quite a few controversial decisions, for example, Roy Jones Jr. v Antonio Tarver, Oscar De La Hoya v Felix Sturm, David Tua v Hasim Rahman II, Scott Harrison v Victor Polo, Marco Antonio Barrera v Erik Morales II, and Chris Byrd v Fres Oquendo, to name a few.. These are all big fights which people around the world were watching. True, some fights are hard to score, but the judge’s problem lies further than this. One must wonder whether the judges have already decided that if this fight goes 12 rounds Fighter A has to win.
Forget Fighter B has landed harder punches, better defence etc. Another example was the judge who scored the fight for Holyfield in the fight between Lennox Lewis v Evander Holyfield to Holyfield. That was a terrible decision, in my opinion. Or Judge Robert Grasso, who has also shockingly scored Rahman v Tua 2, to Tua, or how about judge Glen Hamada, who scored Jones v Tarver I , to Jones, by the score 117-111. These are three poor examples that come to mind. If controversial judge’s decisions continue to become a factor in boxing, then how much power do the fighters have in winning fights? It seems to me, boxers are now just pawns in the controversy that has become boxing. Sure, judges get the decisions right quite frequently but whenever that happens, it seems we give praise and breathe a huge sigh of relief.
This shouldn’t be happening; we should be able to trust the judges in giving a fair decision to get back some credibility that this sport has lost over the years. Boxing has become a sport that seemingly thrives in controversy, and also seems to be able to continuously bounce back from the controversy. There is no consistency in the scoring as just as the sport starts to forget about the judges, boxing gets dragged down again. Take, for instance, Chris Byrd v Wladimir Klitschko II. I honestly feel Byrd will have to knock out Klitschko to win the fight. Based on the past experiences of some American fighters who were on the losing end of bad decisions, I cannot see the judges giving any 50-50 rounds to Byrd at all. They have a job to do, yet I still think some of them possibly want to see Klitschko become the next IBF heavyweight champion. Not that Wladimir needs help to win a fight but it seems that Byrd has nothing going for him, in terms of winning this fight. This is just how I feel about it. Some of the promoters also haven’t sat up and took a stand against the bad scoring, since they seem to just be content to settle for a rematch or will change the subject.
I don’t know how to solve this problem but I know if somebody doesn’t do something about this , the sport will continue to be dragged down to the point were it regularly loses fans and maybe eventually becomes only a bit part sport in the USA. In closing, I would like to ask the boxing organizations, like the WBC, WBO, WBA, and IBF, to solve this somehow and take some responsibility for the problem they have more or less created.