We bitch all the time about pussy - footing fighters who run and hold all the time and turn the sport into a tedious game. But the bottom line is fighters are going to do whatever they can get away with to win. It'd be unreasonable to expect otherwise. Sure fighters pay a price for being boring. And there's certainly upside to being exciting. But nothing's worse than losing. The safe bet, for many fighters, is to win ugly. So who is to blame? I say it's the judges and the referees. When it comes to the refs, it's a simple matter. They enable stink fighting by not consistently enforcing the rules. In boxing, holding is illegal. If they enforced the rule more evenly, it'd be a short while before fighters stopped doing it. And as a result, boxing would be a lot better. The judges are to blame also. The criteria they're given for scoring fights clearly implies that holding and running should be penalized. And that fighters who are forcing the action should be rewarded. And yet time after time we see holding, running and pushing rewarded. Fighters are there to win. It's the job of the judges and refs to define winning in such a way that fighters who engage with offense and legitimate defense are the ones who thrive.
I'd tend to agree with you, especially re: the culpability of refs who (to my eyes) seemed to change their approach some time in the 90s between demanding that guys fight their way out & warning them if they didn't to just breaking clinches instantly. Richard Steele was especially bad at this, as i remember. When initiating a clinch=a guaranteed free pass to have the fight start over again out at range/centre ring then you'd be crazy not to clinch if you're a guy who wants things on the outside. It's depressing that the best reffing display of recent years imo (Cooper in Khan/Peterson) caught possibly the most flack of any recent reffing performance of recent largely because it broke with years of shitty precedent.
I think pushing-off should be permitted. George Foreman was at it in the 1970's. Permit it up to an extent at least. If its ALL a guy is doing then maybe a point. Ironically, when WK lost a point vs Jennings, he worked Jennings over worse as a result. ::
