In the fracas over Manny Pacquiao's loss to Timothy Bradley, many will
turn to the punch stats to justify their outrage. Promoter Bob Arum is
so furious about the decision that he is demanding an investigation into
the scoring before he will consider a rematch. Nonetheless, the way
fans score a fight these days is surely impacted by the numbers that
come up on the screen at each round's end.
Bob Canobbio, who founded the CompuBox system in 1985 and has tallied
shots on more than 4,000 fights, insists that the numbers, which the
judges have no access to, tell the story 90% of the time. Canobbio has a
six-person team. Members "start out counting punches on tapes and in
the undercards of fights." Canobbio checks their numbers against his
own.
There are two scorers for every bout, one on each fighter, otherwise
"counting punches is impossible." Asked if he verifies his figures
against the replay, Canobbio said, "No, I go back just to watch the
fight but don't second-guess myself with the counts."
"The most difficult bouts are those with a lot of infighting, but
there was little of this on Saturday," Cannobbio said. "It was very easy
to count punches."
Canobbio maintains that Pacquiao-Bradley was one of the bouts in
which the numbers were definitive. "Bradley threw more punches," he
said, "but Pacquiao landed 94 more." More important, Pacquiao connected
with 82 more power punches. According to the CompuBox system, "Any punch
that is not a jab is counted as a power punch."
—
Gordon Marino
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