With another recent scoring controversy in the books (Cloud vs Campillo), Ryan Bivins returns to BLH today with another look at what can be done to improve the way boxing is scored.
As previously discussed in "Robbery or Close Fight? - The Failings of the 10 Point Must System", boxing scoring still leaves a lot to be desired. Close fights can produce shutout scorecards and dominant wins can produce close scorecards. The reluctance to score even rounds along with only having 10 points to work with per round makes this possible. Currently the narrowest margin a judge can give, which isn't even, is 10-9, effectively a 10% difference. If there were more points to work with, that difference reduces.
A scorecard is essentially a statistical analysis of a fight. Anyone who has ever studied statistics would know the results are more revealing when the data pool increases. For example, when you flip a coin there's a 50% chance it lands on head or tails. But, if you flip it 10 times you could easily end up with 7 heads and 3 tails. However if you flip it 100 times achieving 70/30 would be virtually impossible. You're going to get closer to 50/50. Likewise, if you score rounds out of 100 points, the scores are more likely to represent how close rounds actually were. It's not an opinion, it's just math.
Last night we discussed UFC president Dana White calling Floyd Mayweather racist for his comments about Jeremy Lin. It didn't take too long for Mayweather, or at least a Mayweather representative to fire back.
Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports with the words:
"He needs to shut the [expletive] up and mind his own business, stay in his own lane and keep on taking advantage of the UFC fighters, while underpaying them," Ellerbe told Yahoo! Sports after learning of White's rant. "If he keeps on running his mouth, we may decide to give a free seminar to all of the UFC fighters on how the pay-per-view revenue should be distributed. This is typical Dana, who is always prone to ignorant outbursts. He should be the last person to try to judge someone else."
After learning of Ellerbe's response, White sent a text to Yahoo! Sports directed to Ellerbe.
"Just for the record, shut the [expletive] up [because] I wasn't talking to you," White said by text. "I was talking to Floyd. We're doing something amazing. We're building a sport while you guys are destroying one. "
Deontay Wilder, the 26-year-old American heavyweight prospect from Alabama, is returning to the ring this Saturday in Missouri on the Maidana vs Alexander undercard, and though he's been protected so far in his pro career, Golden Boy Promotions is taking it to a new low with this matchup.
Wilder (20-0, 20 KO) is facing Marlon Hayes (23-10, 11 KO). Right there the record isn't so bad -- a journeyman, you might be thinking, or a gatekeeper. But that's not the case at all. This is a fight that the Missouri commission shouldn't even be sanctioning, and that Golden Boy should be ashamed of putting together.
With all of the post-fight attention focused on the debacle that erupted between Dereck Chisora and David Haye (read Thomas Hill and Oli Goldstein for different takes on that mess), it's pretty much gone barely report that Vitali Klitschko, now 40 and starting to look it a little bit, won the big fight in Munich on Saturday, defeating Chisora by unanimous decision in a fight that he had to truly earn for the first time in a good, long while -- really, it was his toughest fight since Lennox Lewis in 2003, not that that says a lot considering some of the dominant exhibitions he's put on since then.
Klitschko (44-2, 40 KO) has said repeatedly that he's not planning to hang around boxing, waiting for someone to come along and beat him, damaging his long-term health for the sake of a good story or anything of that nature. He will retire when he sees fit, and he has indicated that 2012 will be his final year in the ring.
The idea at one point was that Klitschko would fight twice in 2012, with one of those bouts coming against David Haye, a fighter he has said he wants to knock out, finishing the job little brother Wladimir started when he dominated Haye in July 2011. But recently, talks for a Vitali vs Haye fight fell through, with the Klitschko side saying they're no longer interested, a point repeated by manager Bernd Boente on Saturday just before the Chisora-Haye madness began.
Amidst the chaos and clamour of Saturday night's now infamous press conference, one sentence of searing clarity rang out aloud through the packed Munich press room. Moments before Dereck Chisora would confront David Haye over his screaming and squealing from the corner of the room, Don Charles, a man of few words, dismissively gestured towards the purported saviour of heavyweight boxing and labelled him a ‘salesman.'
Four years since the commencement of his heavyweight campaign: four title fights, many millions of PPVs sold and a much-anticipated retirement later, this is the ineffable impression that Haye has left us with. A man of much sound, much fury - signifying nothing.
In the aftermath of their Munich brawl, the British press has - surprise, surprise - lambasted the behaviour of its two premier heavyweights. The Munich melee can only damage British boxing, explained the BBC's Ben Dirs, while popular British fighters such as Ricky Hatton, Tony Bellew and Carl Froch spoke over the airwaves, typed over Twitter, all in condemnation of the unseemly scenes of Saturday night.
Yet the underlying impression persists, at least to this observer, that the damage was done long before Chisora and Haye swore a few times, threw a tripod and had a quick wrestle on the floor.
After another long night watching the boxing yesterday, I called it a night pretty impressed with Dereck Chisora's performance, yet less than 12 hours later I've awoken to a story which should make most boxing fans cringe.
Through the night we covered the unfolding story of David Haye and Dereck Chisora going to war at the post-fight press conference. This morning I've had time to take it all in and read all of the thoughts of the readers here at Bad Left Hook.
Before I ramble on about the disgraceful behaviour of all parties, I'd to make a point about the performance of Chisora. Despite having little experience and very little practice against the world elite he did himself proud. He never gave in and constantly came forward. Yes he got beat and deservedly so, but at least he stood there and basically said, "Let's have it." I'd much rather see people like Chisora than the likes of Samuel Peter, Tomasz Adamek and Shannon Briggs.
As for the aftermath, pre-fight and anything not in the ring, well that's a totally different ball game.
James Foley returns to Bad Left Hook tonight with a look at where the sweet science stands in the American sports culture.
Boxing entered 2012 somewhere behind golf, auto racing and poker (gasp!) on the American sports hierarchy. Okay, poker's not really a sport (neither are the other two), but the point is, the sweet science has seen better days. Once upon a time, the heavyweight champion of the world was the most famous athlete on the planet. Now it's "some dude from somewhere who I think was dating that chick from Heroes."
Anyone go into work on December 12th and catch the buzz from that fabulous Amir Khan-Lamont Peterson fight? Me neither. If you asked the crowd whether they'd seen it, you'd likely have been greeted with uncomfortable silence and a few awkward stares. "What is that, some UFC thing...? Nah, I don't watch that crap." "No, it's boxing." "Oh....well, I don't watch that either."
(Note-the dated reference to the Khan fight belies the fact that I started working on this two months ago. Relax.)
More people in the U.S. have heard of the 200th best guy in the National Football League than the 3rd best fighter in the world. Kris Humphries is a better known athlete than Andre Ward. And by the way, that was true before Mr. Humphries had anything to do with the lovely Ms. Kardashian and her sumptuous rump. Boxing is a niche sport, followed avidly by just a tiny fraction of the population. So-called major fights are being watched by well under 1% of the country. As boxing fans, we're all 1%ers baby! Unfortunately, we're not powerful enough to warrant protests...well, until the day society decides to outlaw this brutal pastime.
Less than three months from now the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada may double as a funeral home for one of this generation's finest fighters. Shane Mosley, the same man that was widely recognized as the world's best lightweight some 13 years ago, will face Canelo Alvarez at junior middleweight in a fight made possible by the people at Golden Boy Promotions. The same people that claimed they were going to work to clean up boxing, and change the game.
When Oscar de la Hoya began his promotional company it was naturally met with some derision. Many fighters attempt such a task with limited or completely absent success. Oscar started by promoting small cards to get a feel for the business, and eventually (spoiler alert) they have grown to be one of the biggest promotional companies in the sport. In short, regardless of how little he now has to do with the finished product, he did follow through with his goal to have a legitimate promotional company. Bravo for him.
However, something has become startlingly clear over the past few years: Golden Boy Promotions is no different than any other promotional company. They protect their prospects just like other promoters. They have put on some terrible pay-per-view undercards just like other promoters. They can even bullshit just like other promoters.
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