Pacquiao's loss of his WBO welterweight belt in Las Vegas was not fraud, just more ignorance from ludicrous bow-tied judges
Distance does not always lend enchantment. Having finally caught up with a tape of the fight between Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley, it was hard not to conclude that boxing is doomed to forever be peopled by brave fighters and idiots in suits.
How two judges could see the fight in Bradley's favour is beyond me.
Pacquiao got the benefit of the doubt against Juan Manuel Márquez in his last fight, but this was worse – by three to four rounds.
The problem is manifold.
The casual viewer imagines boxing is run still by gangsters and any dubious decision is a fix. That is simplistic. There are some marginal characters still in the business, because it attracts people who thrive on the anarchy of a sport with four main governing bodies and hundreds of easily charmed officials. But there are very few prearranged results these days, if any – at least in recent times.
Nevertheless, into this chaos come judges and referees who look the part, with their ludicrous badges and bow ties, but whose grasp of the fundamentals is often shaky. A few are excellent. Some are OK. Too many are blindingly poor.
On Saturday night in Las Vegas two of the three judges, Duane Ford and C J Ross, gave the fight to Bradley by margins of 115-113. The third official, Jerry Roth, saw it the other way by the same score.
This would suggest a close fight. It was not. Well, not in the opinion of nearly everyone in the building as well as nearly everyone who has given his or her tuppenceworth on it since. A poll of more than 50 boxing writers found only three who agreed with Ford and Ross.
I had Bradley winning two of the last three rounds and sharing a couple early on in a slow start. The other eight went to Pacquiao, in my humble opinion, at least four of those without argument. He hit harder, more often and took not much in return. Where he let himself down was in starting slowly and not finishing the fight conclusively.
Nevertheless, he did not deserve to lose his title – unlike his fight against Márquez, in which the Mexican should have got the decision by a couple of rounds. That, though, was a close fight. This was one-sided to anyone who knows anything about boxing.
And that's the nub of the problem. Too many people – from fans with websites to the hired help with pencils and scorecards who sit in judgment at ringside – do not understand either the fundamentals of the sport – having never boxed, perhaps – or the tricky job of scoring.
The governing bodies insist they instruct their judges on how to score a fight, to reward clean scoring shots with the legal part of the glove, to take note of aggression and not to be swayed by late flurries in a round but to take in the action of the whole three minutes. What they do not tell them is that many rounds are too close to give to either fighter. They are encouraged not to sit on the fence but to make a call one way or another even though, in their own minds, they cannot be sure one fighter is dominant in a particular round.
How many times do you hear fans at a fight say, "How'd you see that one? Bit close, wasn't it."
At the heart of the judgment should be this: a fighter cannot win a round if he does not land more obvious scoring punches than his opponent.
When David Haye beat Nikolay Valuev, Jim Watt, an excellent commentator and judge of a fight, reckoned Haye had not done enough to take the title from the Russian. But this was to fall for the old trap of burdening the challenger with "making the fight", taking it away from the champion. It is a nonsense. The fight stands alone, a contest between two boxers on the night, and no notion of the champion having an edge before the first bell should be countenanced. This leads to the "house fighter" syndrome and the perception that one boxer is favoured to win by the promoters, the broadcasters and the industry as a whole.
I slow-moed that fight a few days later and Haye landed approximately 150 punches to 50, a boring bout, obviously, but a clear win to the challenger.
He rightly got the verdict.
On Saturday night in Las Vegas, the challenger Bradley was somehow seen as the winner by two judges who ignored all the above guidelines. Pacquiao outpunched him, outboxed him and was by a little distance the better fighter on the night.
It should be as simple as that. But it's not. And that is the single major reason the sport is perpetually in such a mess. It's not fraud, it's plain old human failing. It is hard to see it changing.
Distance does not always lend enchantment. Having finally caught up with a tape of the fight between Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley, it was hard not to conclude that boxing is doomed to forever be peopled by brave fighters and idiots in suits.
How two judges could see the fight in Bradley's favour is beyond me.
Pacquiao got the benefit of the doubt against Juan Manuel Márquez in his last fight, but this was worse – by three to four rounds.
The problem is manifold.
The casual viewer imagines boxing is run still by gangsters and any dubious decision is a fix. That is simplistic. There are some marginal characters still in the business, because it attracts people who thrive on the anarchy of a sport with four main governing bodies and hundreds of easily charmed officials. But there are very few prearranged results these days, if any – at least in recent times.
Nevertheless, into this chaos come judges and referees who look the part, with their ludicrous badges and bow ties, but whose grasp of the fundamentals is often shaky. A few are excellent. Some are OK. Too many are blindingly poor.
On Saturday night in Las Vegas two of the three judges, Duane Ford and C J Ross, gave the fight to Bradley by margins of 115-113. The third official, Jerry Roth, saw it the other way by the same score.
This would suggest a close fight. It was not. Well, not in the opinion of nearly everyone in the building as well as nearly everyone who has given his or her tuppenceworth on it since. A poll of more than 50 boxing writers found only three who agreed with Ford and Ross.
I had Bradley winning two of the last three rounds and sharing a couple early on in a slow start. The other eight went to Pacquiao, in my humble opinion, at least four of those without argument. He hit harder, more often and took not much in return. Where he let himself down was in starting slowly and not finishing the fight conclusively.
Nevertheless, he did not deserve to lose his title – unlike his fight against Márquez, in which the Mexican should have got the decision by a couple of rounds. That, though, was a close fight. This was one-sided to anyone who knows anything about boxing.
And that's the nub of the problem. Too many people – from fans with websites to the hired help with pencils and scorecards who sit in judgment at ringside – do not understand either the fundamentals of the sport – having never boxed, perhaps – or the tricky job of scoring.
The governing bodies insist they instruct their judges on how to score a fight, to reward clean scoring shots with the legal part of the glove, to take note of aggression and not to be swayed by late flurries in a round but to take in the action of the whole three minutes. What they do not tell them is that many rounds are too close to give to either fighter. They are encouraged not to sit on the fence but to make a call one way or another even though, in their own minds, they cannot be sure one fighter is dominant in a particular round.
How many times do you hear fans at a fight say, "How'd you see that one? Bit close, wasn't it."
At the heart of the judgment should be this: a fighter cannot win a round if he does not land more obvious scoring punches than his opponent.
When David Haye beat Nikolay Valuev, Jim Watt, an excellent commentator and judge of a fight, reckoned Haye had not done enough to take the title from the Russian. But this was to fall for the old trap of burdening the challenger with "making the fight", taking it away from the champion. It is a nonsense. The fight stands alone, a contest between two boxers on the night, and no notion of the champion having an edge before the first bell should be countenanced. This leads to the "house fighter" syndrome and the perception that one boxer is favoured to win by the promoters, the broadcasters and the industry as a whole.
I slow-moed that fight a few days later and Haye landed approximately 150 punches to 50, a boring bout, obviously, but a clear win to the challenger.
He rightly got the verdict.
On Saturday night in Las Vegas, the challenger Bradley was somehow seen as the winner by two judges who ignored all the above guidelines. Pacquiao outpunched him, outboxed him and was by a little distance the better fighter on the night.
It should be as simple as that. But it's not. And that is the single major reason the sport is perpetually in such a mess. It's not fraud, it's plain old human failing. It is hard to see it changing.
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