Take Williams/Lara as an example. Do you think a bad decision like that is planned in advance? Briefcase full of money? Top secret pre-fight meeting? What's the incentive for the judges? Cash? Better assignments? Or is it just incompetence?
Long past the belief in incompetence, steve. Boxing is a very shady sport and you've all seen the footage of promoters taking bribes to fix rankings. The WBA took a bribe from Don King to insert Peter McNeely into it's top 10 rankings in 1995. Then you had that bitch Eugenia Williams giving Holyfield the win against Lewis in fight 1. What more do you need to know? It's not incompetence! It's a business run by criminals is what it is. Bribes, briefcases filled with lots of money, the whole thing.
how much money could really be involved here. williams is not a draw and haymon, though he has influence, is not going to pay out large sums for a guy at the end of the line like williams. these officials know where their bread is buttered as you can tell by the culprits' judging history.
I think it's a combination of incompetence and the belief in picking the right fighter will get them their next job. Hell, maybe they just got done judging some amateur fights and forgot this was a pro fight. That system might have actually given this fight to Williams. :dunno:
I really don't know anymore. I understand how damn hard it is to judge some fights and how they often look different from the ringside and TV (and I don't mean Lampley's cheerleading: from ringside you can see the damage of punches better, from TV the more active or more cleanly landing guy seems to always win). However, there are so many decisions that are seemingly impossible to defend. Is it some kind of unwritten deal that judges get to know when they talk together or something, perhaps
I only watched the first 8 rounds but the fight didn't seem like a robbery to me so far. Lara is far too inactive for him to decisively take the W. From what I have seen, Alexander-Mathysse was a far bigger robbery.
As for the judges, as someone said, they knows who put butter on their bread, so while they may not be corrupted per se, they ''unconsciously'' go toward the better connected guy.
I'd imagine the process is usually more implicit than that. They know they'll continue getting the good gigs if they prove themselves team players.
Fight looks a lot different from ringside. I've heard people in the audience say the fight was a draw.
I get the impression that most judges would give close rounds to the favourite. So for example: Marquez vs Pac. Everyone wants to see Pac-Mayweather...including the judges....so Marquez would have to utterly dominate his rounds to be awared them and Pac just needs close rounds for the judges to give it to him. That's my belief and I'm sticking to it.
That's where I'm at... It just HAS to be more than mere incompetence Take Dalby Shirley, for example, check out these cards: HAGLER/ANTUOFERMO... 144-142 for VITO ... I've not enountered anyone (with the exception of Smegman) who thought Vito won that fight... I've seen only a handful who have ever agreed with a draw... Vito surged in the seocnd half, which made it closer, but Hagler dominated the early rounds and held his own the rest of the way... Shirley has Vito a clear winner. HEARNS/LEONARD II ... 112-112... It's not as bad as Tom Kazmarek (113-112 for Leonard) but its not good MOORER/HOLYFIELD ... 114-114... Michael Moorer pretty clearly won this fight, at leats by a couple of points... the other judges had it for him by one (still fairly incompetent) and 4 (a bit generous) points CHAVEZ/RANDALL II ... 76-75 for Chavez? DLH/WHITAKER... 116-110 for Hoya... I doubt even Double L had it that wide for Oscar... that's an amazingly incompetent card MORALES/BARRERA I ...115-112 for MORALES... come on now... I don't really udnerstand the people who think Morales won this fight, but I think most would agree that if he did, it wasn't 8 rounds to 4 Stranger still, a look over Shirley's record tends to show at least a somewhat reasonable eye in non-title fights... but these big ones?
Exactly. The marketable commodity in all cases. 'Incompetence' almost never bumbles over the other side of the deck. Be surprised if direct corruption was common but like most shoddy outcomes in capitalism there's a structural incentive there.
Announcer brainwashing and the usual disregard for close rounds being able to go to either guy, although Max does mention this. The followup to a bad decision is the mass's inability to break a fight down into single rounds and make the argument about specific rounds and not a final card.
Some times it could be flat out bribes but that's probably more of the exception. I think the majority of the time it's either incompetence or judges that know the "script".
A lot of it is also people thinking they are more qualified to judge than trained judges. A lot of it is the perspective from ringside(the Williams-Lara fight specifically, I heard pretty much that someone on another forum that was there live scored it 114-144). Not so much incompetence OR bribery.
shirley has had some pretty corrupt cards on off tv undercard bouts as well. he's scum. he'll go ahead and give the first three rounds to the house guy and then give the opponent the last round to make his card look less crooked on a 4 round swing fight. seen it happen many times
Without commenting on Shirley doing this because I don't know, this type of conduct is exactly the type of bullshit that flies under the radar and gets ignored because his final score might be acceptable even though his judging could have been complete shit.
Completely agree. Prime example is complaining about a 116-112 card in a close fight. That IS a close card. It means you are arguing for 1 round in the fight.
I think the old system of distance fights being NCs with unofficial 'newspaper decisions' had many plus sides
