Atlas, Papa, and Gray: A trio of shit

I'm finishing up on the semifinals finally and I'm listening to this crap as these three go over their thoughts on amateur boxing, its scoring, etc.

There are legitimate criticisms out there, but these guys lack the mental horsepower and general knowledge of the history of computerized scoring to fairly and effectively convey these criticisms.

So, we end up with Papa's histrionics, Atlas's short bus wizardry, and Gray's dumb blonde cheerleader routine. It's too bad because a fair, even-handed discussion could probably result in some good ideas.

Tommy Virgets (I think he was Morrison's old trainer), Campbell, Jim Millman (CEO of USA boxing), and Ching-Kuo Wu all have been interviewed to this point and every one of them comes across as more reasonable than the three dipshits in the forefront.

Throw in Roggin's painful schtick and the four most visible guys have unified in putting forth a negative spin on the sport. No problem there, but when you are going negative, you owe it to the viewers to do it in an intelligent and fair manner. And the coverage failed miserably in this regard.

 

They went overboard in complaining for sure but they did make it a point to say that it wasn't just the Americans not getting a fair shake. That was hardly:cheer:ish.

I'm glad other combat sports had their officiating/scoring problems too, it seems that it's a systematic problem, not favortism.

 

I think Bob Papa is so fuckin overrated! Lampley is well past his prime as a blow-by-blow commentator, but I'd still take him over Papa anyday. A prime Lampley is 2 light years better than Papa!

 

You have to realize, they've seen almost every bout and by the time the semi's rolled around they saw a bunch of guys there who they felt didn't belong.

I forget which guy it was but he absolutely got his ass whupped by Samir and yet still won the fight.

Though they were repetitive in the criticism, the scoring was equally as bad. I thought Andrade got robbed. Terrible scoring in that one.

 

Sure, they've seen more than I have, but I've seen everything televised by CNBC which is a lot--I'm guessing close to 200 bouts--and I think they were on 260 to that point. [Edit: I haven't watched all 200 by any means, but I did watch a lot and I would rewind most of the close ones.]

But,
there was constant harping over single points. Look Papa and Atlas, I agree it sucks when a clean punch isn't scored, but it's only one punch and you made your point. Get over it.
There aren't too many fights where the wrong guy won--Virgets guessed 90 to 95% (10% would have been 26 fights) went to the right guy. I'd guess it was at least 95%.
Now, switch to pro boxing...how often does the wrong guy get the decision in those? At least as often, and probably a lot more. Especially, if we go by the Atlas-meter (Atlas bitching about the scoring at the end of the fight).

I'm not a fan of the low scoring in this Olympics. I think it pretty much sucked. Did it make the boxing boring? No. Did it make the sport irrelevant? No. But I have to sit through Gray trying to convince us that it did and when the talking-heads start spouting bullshit, it usually has an effect, regardless of how stupid and wrong it is. In this case, they actually did have a point, they just went too far with it, imo.

 

They've actually been getting some pretty good treatment from the media.

10% is more than alot. They were talking about 10% of all amateur boxing. If you look at every pro fight, the number is nowhere near 10%. It's not even 10 in every televised fight.

This was a big problem for every nation, and the US commentators weren't the only ones complaining about it. I've seen the UK broadcasts, and I've heard from relatives overseas that their commentators have been saying the same about boxing.

And when you're looking at scores like 6-5....that one point is the difference between standing on a podium or watching from your hotel room. Or for some fighters, it could be the difference of more than a few thousand dollars.

The system isn't broken, but it's most definately flawed. I thought they did a teriffic job in their complaints and overall coverage of the tournament.

 

I agree completely. I dislike Atlas and Jim Gray in general as commentators, but they were spot on the entire time.

 

Especially Gray, who I f'n hate.

His point about viewers walking away bored from olympic boxing said alot. Especially because of AIBA's announcement of a paid league. If the fans are bored, who would want to invest?

I heard that NBC has been pleased with the ratings boxing recieved though. I haven't looked at them myself, so don't hold me to that statement.



I don't really mind the scoring all that much, but the 10 point must system is much better. I didn't mind the supposed suspect decisions in the first two rounds. It was the bad and inconsistent scoring in the final rounds that really got to me.

 

Robberies=Ratings

 

At what?

Talking over the action?

Verbal slight of hand and misdirection?

 

Arben, the 10% number refers to the wrong guy getting the decision.

if you have ever watched an ESPN2 telecast with Teddy Atlas, you would know that he bitches about a scoring in a particular fight at least once per telecast, sometimes more. This % is way above 10%.

 

Can you name the last five obviously bad decisions in professional boxing?

There's been about 30 in the past three weeks in the olympics according to AIBA.

 

Do you know how many hours of boxing they aired?

I'm guessing boxing ended up as the most televised sport this Olympics on the NBC networks, though most of it was on CNBC.

I'm curious whether that is correct or not.

 

No, this was according to Tommy Virget's estimation and then he changed it to 5%, which would be half. Plus, no one said anything about 'obviously bad'.

I only said that going by Teddy's comments, the number at the olympics is no more than he typically bitches about, and probably considerably less. If you haven't seen an ESPN2 telecast, you won't get this. I'm not exaggerating. As to the last 5, others can chime in about the last 5 according to Teddy, or I can keep track. It won't take me long.

 

This really sums up the approach of the guys I'm criticizing in the OP.

 

On ESPN Teddy doesn't bitch about the decisions and scoring. He focuses on the match ups and local commissions and the need for a national "boxin' commishun."

 

Your first sentence is just plain wrong.
"I don't know what those judges were watching." "At least the right guy got the decision." "Are you kidding me? 79-73? This was more like a split-decision type fight." "More home-town cookin'." "This is outrageous. There's no way he only won 2 rounds! [cue in national commission rant]."

 

I forget which fight it was.. but I recall one instance where a fighter landed a short hard inside punch, landed VERY clean, with the camera at the perfect angle and zoomed in. It was the type of shot that should have been scored. And it was scored.

Atlas and co. however, did not see this shot, that was blatantly clear to the judges, and anyone watching closely on their TV. Rather than accept this punch, they went on a 3 minute long tirade about the horrendous judging, and how that punch should never have been scored and clearly pointed to corruption. Meanwhile the other fighter semi-landed a couple crappy shots, and added fuel to their fire.. NOW WHY DIDN'T THAT PUNCH SCORE ?!?! At that point I really began to change my view on the whole issue.

These guys are clowns, and I would take the decision of the judges over them any day of the week.

I agree there have been some poor decisions as the sport is very prone to them. And certainly there has been alot of cleanly landed punches that missed getting scored, but all in all the right guy HAS usually won, at least 90% of the time, and there haven't been any daylight robberies like we see a couple times every year in pro boxing.

I actually like the olympic scoring system better the more that I watch it.

 

I meant to say in comparison he doesn't complain about decisions as much as he complains about the local comissions and need for a national comission. In fact, he was suspended because of some of the comments he made about ESPN and their relationship to promoters.

 

Regarding Jim Gray's "boring" comment, I think it has to be taken into consideration what perspective he's speaking from...primarily an American one that favors professional boxing, and doesn't spend much time watching or supporting amateur boxing...and that saw their Olympic team do very poorly in comparison to past teams.

I wouldn't expect that to be the same opinion that many Chinese walk away with from these Olympics. Zou Shiming, who didn't always fight in the most exciting or entertaining fashion, and the rest of the Chinese team seemed to have good support throughout the Olympics. Furthermore, they've seen them have success in the Olympics...first with Shiming winning a medal in '04, and now gold along with Zhang, and the rest of the teams success.

Vijender Kumar, another fighter who didn't have the most exciting style, won India's first ever boxing medal.

Bruno Julie won Mauritius's first Olympic medal.

Thailand had gold and silver medals won by Somjit Jongjohor and Manus Boonjumnong, respectively.

I don't know the way each and every one of these boxers were recieved in their home countries, but chances are they're celebrated in at least some measure and the opinions of their countrymen might not all be that Olympic boxing is "boring" or unwatchable, or needs drastic changes.

Opinions are effected by success and expectation, and the Americans expected more than they got.

But had their fighters had more success, within this system, perhaps the criticism wouldn't have been as loud.

The scoring didn't reward some fighters it should have, but I think it's a misnomer to think this was always the case, or nearly always...or even that the Americans always had the more positive, entertaining style.

An example...Luis Yanez. His performance in defeat, outside of perhaps 30 seconds, was frankly rather boring, that featured a lot of posing and feinting. He seemed to be capable of far more. If he did, perhaps he wins a medal.

It can be pointed out that Ukraine's Vasyl Lomachenko won a gold medal and the Val Barker award and he was one of the most exciting fighters to watch.

But he went out and fought more than some of the Americans did...and frankly, had some of the best technique and style of the amateurs I saw.

I saw Russians and Cubans with better skills and technique than some of the Americans.

So I also think it's incorrect to think that, if we had pro judging, that Americans would've had a great more deal of success. Some would have. But some of the USA members simply weren't among the best boxers in their weight classes.

That's something that needs as much criticism as the scoring, IMO, but it's been drowned out by criticism of the system (which I also agree needs to be criticized).

 

This isn't true for a couple fighters. I think Raynell Williams and Andrade will be good pros and both got bad decisions. Don't forget, Andrade was the world champion...he was the best in his division. I didn't see him lose that fight.

Lomachencko was by far the best of all the boxers. Wasn't even close.

 

I know there were exceptions on the Amreican team. Andrade didn't fight great in his loss but I thought he deserved to win. Williams certainly looked like he won to me.

 

Oh, then I agree.

 

There are dogs on the team no doubt. Molina was awful, Estrada is awful, Ali is awful, and despite getting a bronze, Wilder is awful. Says more about how crappy his draw was than anything else.

Yanez has good skills, just needs to drop the attitude. He'll be a solid pro but at his weight class, unless he turns into a brawler, has power and gets into exciting fights his pro career goes no where. He's simply too small.

It's not like he's exciting and goes to war like a Michael Carbajal. If he doesn't have any power, he'll be a smaller Clarence Vinson.

 

2004 U.S. Olympians

Let's take a look back at the 2004 team...see any future stars?


Rau'shee Warren
Vincente Escobedo
Rock Allen
Vanes Martirosyan
Andre Dirrell
Andre Ward
Devon Vargas
Jason Estrada

Makes the 1996 team look like the 1976 or 1984 team

Albert Guardado
Eric Morel
Zahir Raheem
Floyd Mayweather
Terence Cauthen
David Diaz
Fernando Vargas
Rhoshii Wells
Antonio Tarver
Nate Jones
Lawrence Clay-Bey

 

mikE raises a lot of interesting points. One of the things I used to most appreciate about Atlas and Papa during their ESPN2 FNF tour was their ability to maintain your interest throughout the broadcast, no matter how exciting or dull was the fight we were watching.

None of that was offered in the Olympics. Instead, the same repeated bitching about the scoring system, to where you could no longer appreciate the fight itself.

The way I saw it, the only ones watching boxing on CNBC were those who went out of their way to find where boxing was being aired. This fact seemed to be lost on the announcers, who instead went out of their way to beat the viewers over the head with scoring discrepancies and such as if they were explaining the sport to middle-aged housewives killing time while awaiting coverage of gymnastics or synchronized swimming.

Fans knew what was going on, it was near unanimous that the scoring system sucked. But Teddy and especially Papa let it alter their own performances behind the mic. I expect it of Teddy (who also couldn't go an entire fight without insisting that the taller boxer was failing to "fight tall" ::), but Papa was always successful in knowing when to cut him off. This time, he got caught up and was along the ride the entire way.

All told, I enjoyed the Olympics for the action that took place. People bitch all the time about open scoring - if you hate it that much, ignore the damn scoreboard and focus on the fight itself.

 

what about the american cyclops?

 

I've got 25 dvds with probably 2 more to go and maybe more if Telemundo has unique fights. And that is with all commercials removed and duplicate fights not counted (a few American fights were broadcast more than once).

So...if I have 54 hrs of CNBC...figure at least 70 hrs of broadcast time, and probably closer to 75 or more.

 

I think Telemundo showed some of the gold medal bouts NBC didn't.

I know they did on Saturday. Unfortunately, I missed it on Sunday, when I'm sure they probably aired some finals...like the Tishchenko fight.

 

I don't think Tishchenko's Finals fight was aired at all in the States. I caught it online from an overseas feed - I learned my lesson on Saturday and took a proactive approach on Sunday. But from Cliff Rold's Finals report card, his chief complaint was missing out on Tishchenko, and not for a lack of trying.

The thing that bugged me the most was Sat night/sun early Am NBC feed listing boxing amongst its 6 hours of overnight coverage. In sifting through all of it, the only mention of boxing was Jim Lampley shilling for Compubox in shitting on the present scoring system in place.