How can boxing eradicate hometown decisions and hotly-disputed verdicts – or at least ensure they are few and far between?
That was the debate on Ringside after controversial judging rose its head again in the sport.
Colin Lynes was thought to be a wide winner over Lee Purdy in his British title challenge, yet Ian John-Lewis scored it a 114-114 draw.
And boxing made the headlines for the wrong reasons last weekend when Manny Pacquiao was the beneficiary of a debateable majority decision following his clash with Juan Manuel M?rquez.
Robert Smith, General Secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, told Ringside that standards of judging are improving in Britain all of the time and insisted that a return to open scoring would be a mistake even if the 10-9 system “could be the root of the problem”.
He added: “I’ve seen the Pacquiao fight and I thought he just nicked it by the skin of his teeth. But the rounds that Pacquiao won were very, very close and the rounds that Marquez won were big and that’s the difference. Honest
“Personally I’m not keen on open scoring because you could get to a situation where you get to the 10th round and they put it on the screen, who is ahead, and one of the boxers who is miles ahead starts running like the clappers and doesn’t fight. That can happen.
“Where do we go? The Board have introduced the three judges for the Championship contest. Do we go to five, do we go to seven? This is the system we have, this is the system we work. It is not fool-proof because we are dealing with human beings and it’s their opinions.
“I honestly believe that we have a very good bunch of officials. An honest decision is a good decision and I honestly, hand on heart, trust these people.
“We might not agree with them. I sat at the DeGale-Groves fight next to Jim Evans, who I have a huge amount of respect for and I’ve known since I was an amateur boxer. Jim had it to DeGale by one round, I had it to Groves – and we know boxing.”
Explaining
Fellow guest Barry McGuigan believes stronger action must be taken against under-performing judges to prevent the sport losing credibility in the eyes of the public.
“The bottom line here is that we are in a subjective sport and we cannot make it objective; it has been the same for 100 years and more,” he said.
“If we don’t strive for excellence we will suffer and accept mediocrity and that’s not good enough.
“I would have universal acceptance that if referees and judges make mistakes they’ve got to be punished and dropped down. That’s the only way you’ll make it better.
Bob Mee, boxing historian, added: “Most decisions that you disagree with that’s just a disagreement – you see something in a different way to someone else.
“Just occasionally you come up with something, as with the Colin Lynes fight last week, where you hear that scorecard and you think ‘I don’t understand that at all. I don’t know where that judge has found five or six rounds against Colin Lynes’.
“Therefore that means explaining because the public are only seeing the same thing.”
