Analyzing the scoring of Pacquiao Bradley

From fightnews.com:


For the record, I only gave Bradley rounds 10 and 12 and while I scored it pretty closely, I probably did not watch the last four rounds as closely as the first 8, at least for scoring purposes.

While it's a horrible decision, after the shock wears off I don't think it will be considered the 'worst' decision ever, but it will be a nominee whenever that conversation comes up.

Corruption? No.
I don't think this was a corrupt decision. Here's why: For it to be corrupt, Ford and Ross had to be in on it since they were the two judges who scored it for Bradley. The first round was pretty close. If you are fixing a fight, you just don't give away a round like that to the 'wrong' guy. Right off, that takes Ross off the hook since she scored it for Pacq.

Then in rounds 2 and especially 11, Ford was the lone judge scoring it for Pacquiao. I thought round 11 was sort of close.

Finally, you never want to have to score the last round to the fixed fighter to get the winner you want. It's too risky. For Bradley to get the win, both Ross and Ford had to score the 12th for him.

HBO brainwashing going on?
Big time. Max made a feeble attempt early on (like after round 1) to say he thought Bradley did decently in round 1, but then he backed down when the swarm of Pacquiao praise set in. Since I was agreeing with the announcers' sentiment, I'm not going to be able to argue where I thought it was particularly telling, but it will be worth listening to someone (anyone) who scored it for Bradley to hear their side.

One possibility: Dividing a round into 3 parts
While I absolutely hate the theory of scoring where you divide a round into 3 parts and the winner is the guy who won 2 of them, this is a theory that some 'respected' judges have put forth. My google skills are letting me down, but I'm sure someone will know who I am thinking of.

Anyway, the point is that there were several rounds where neither fighter was doing jack for the first 2 minutes. If Bradley was nipping these portions of the round, a bad judging methodology could have rewarded him 'fairly.'

Round 7?
Did Bradley win this round? All 3 judges had him winning it.

Rounds Bradley may have won based upon Fightbeat judging:
1. mikE: Rounds 10 and 12 (118-110 pacq)
2. MWS: "he was just outclassed in every round apart from 10, 11, and possibly round 1." "but I felt generous giving him round 11," (118-110 pacq)
3. Trplsec: "I gave Bradley the 1st, 7th, 10th and 12th. I scored the 11th even last night" 116-113 (pacq)
4. Outlander: "But I gave Timmy 4 rounds. And I think you could make a case (perhaps a weak one) to give him 5 rounds." (116-112, but 116-113, 115-112 weak possibilities for pacq)
5. Slice n Dice "I had it 8-4, 9-3. Something along those lines" (116-112 pacq)
6. Azazel: "I thought he lost all the first eight and won maybe 3 of the last 4. Hell, I wouldn't have aruged to much with 10-2 Pac" [This means round 9 to Bradley] (117-110 pacq)
7. cdogg187: "I gave him the second and 3 of the last 4 " [This adds round 2 to the mix.] (116-112 pacq)[edit: cdogg later clarifies that "3 of the last four" means the last 3. An unusual phrasing, but we'll go with that.]
8. Punk: "I gave Braddles the first 2 and the last 3." (115-113 Pacquiao)
9. puerto rock: 116-112 pacq

So, after only 9 people, and specific rounds listed by only 6 [edit: 7], we have the possible rounds to Bradley being:

Round 1 (mws, trplsec, Punk)
Round 2 (Punk, cdogg187)
Round 7 (trplsec)
Round 9 (Azazel)
Round 10 (mikE, mws, trplsec, punk, edit: cdogg187)
Round 11 (mws, trplsec even, punk, edit: cdogg187)
Round 12 (mikE, trplsec, punk, edit: cdogg187)

Those rounds = 115-113 Bradley. That's only 6 people's scoring to get to 115-113 for Bradley.

The judges got there by giving in some part rounds 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 to Bradley. It's a given that being ringside and not having the tv angle can sometimes change perception.

 

he only did that to throw you off :34:

 

But let's be real, I think maybe Trpl and Azazel were having a shit when they gave Timmy rounds 7 and 9, because they were clear, clear Pacquiao rounds.

It's also a fact that Pacquiao landed more punches in 10 of the 12 rounds.

Even you only gave Bradley 2 rounds.

There is really no argument for Bradley winning the fight, in fact I think even Bradley winning 4 rounds is absurd.

Having Bradley winning isn't much worse than having Barrera ahead against Pacquiao at the time of the stoppage. Bradley barely landed a clean punch in the entire fight, he landed a few clean jabs in rounds 10 and 11, that was his moment of the fight.

 

I wonder what the score would be if we added up all the rounds that fightbeaters gave to Manny?

 

I'm amused at the level of upset the PacTards have reached.

In addition...I find it hilarious that Duane Ford (scored it for Bradley) is and has been in charge of the judges training program for the ABC Boxing commission for YEARS.

I wonder if there will be a push to replace his old ass.

 

You could have avoided all of the time spent on this "analysis" and just said you disagree with the consensus as you normally do just to be different.

 

:: :bears:

 

I think this was one of the very worst decisions I've ever seen - but I enjoyed the post there are some novel perspectives taken in it

 

That's a silly statement. It should be noted that just for example - loadedgloves, a Floyd fan and arguably the biggest Pacquiao hater on the site also seems outraged and confused at the decision.

Forget about being a fan of the fighters or not, you should be upset as a boxing fan.

I felt almost as outraged about Abril - Rios, and I had never even seen Abril before.

A sickening robbery is a sickening robbery.

 

yeh musze, wtf

 

I think that it's a pretty standard ridiculous decision reaction. All of the articles I've read seem to be in line with the sentiment here.

You don't have to be a fan of Manny, just of boxing.

 

Let's also be real that if your opinions warranted the confidence you have in them, there would be no need for anyone else to post.

 

To be fair, this is a decent attempt at rationalising it actually, although there were just two posters who gave Bradley 7 and 9, which of course give Bradley the crucial two rounds to move ahead. Its still an awful decision and probably the worst high profile robbery I've seen, but it's an interesting way of looking at it. Azazel and Trpl, out of curiosity how come you gave rounds 7 or 9 to Bradley?

 

Except my opinion on the fight is consistent with the consensus, Einstein.

 

Yep :bears:

 

But let's also be real, you seem to like facts, and the facts are Pacquiao outlanded Bradley in 10 out of 12 rounds.

 

And yet you spent all this time trying to make a case for the decision for Bradley being palatable????

You just enjoy being a contrarian. It's what you do.

It was a shit decision. There's no reason to begin the historical revisionism so soon.

 

You could find a handful of random scorecards that pointed to a collection of 7 rounds won in other robberies too, like Whitaker - Chavez and even Abril Vs Rios recently. Doesn't mean anything, and doesn't detract from the fact that they were robberies of historical proportions.

 

I thought this was a good post, an interesting perspective. I think everybody is in agreement it was a bad decision, but it shows how varied peoples scoring can be.

 

And he hits harder which is also a consideration. And he wasn't hitting Bradley with jabs which is also a factor.

Personally, I think a 12-0 shutout for Pacq is much easier to defend based upon what I saw than 7-5 for Bradley, but I'm looking for some justification to what happened and it's not all that hard to find it, apparently.

My number one rule in scoring a fight is 'who would you rather have been in that round'. It's almost impossible to have a bad scorecard if you follow that premise. But I know others do it differently. And some of those others get paid to judge fights.

 

Yep. I don't get how someone can say they gave one fighter only 2 rounds and then basically claim he can understand how the fight was scored for the other fighter.

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me...until I reminded myself who created this topic. ::

 

I agree, the statistical likelihood is minuscule. I just enjoyed the take, and like I said in the post before this one, it's interesting to me how varied posters opinions were on particular rounds.

 

Fair enough.

My criteria for scoring is quite simple.

1) Who landed more punches?

If this first and most important criteria is hard to decipher in a given round I move onto.

2) Who landed the harder punches?

Again, if I deem the number of punches and power of those punches is very similar, I move onto.

3) Who dictated the pace and style of the fight? Who more forced the other guy to fight their style of fight or imposed their will etc?

I think it's a good scoring system.

"Who would you rather be?" is fair enough, but obviously scores are round by round, who you'd rather be in a whole fight could be quite different to the guy that won the most rounds.

 

Explainable, not so much palatable. I've had cards that I've had to defend and the style of the OP is how I've done it. Despite the fact that most people fail to understand it, concurrence of opinion is often disagreement hidden by vagueness.

 

I went back and did the sums (no that isn't all I've done for the last 2 hours ::)

In your OP you said the fightbeat collective felt 7 rounds were contestable.

For talking's sake, lets write two off as not only contestable but cast iron Bradley rounds.

That leaves 5. And Bradley needs them all to win. Lets take the most generous possible interpretation and say the remaining 5 were 50/50 rounds among our sample of honest scorers.

The chances of 50/50 rounds going to a given guy 5 consecutive times are just over 3%. The chances of them going the same way in 2 out of 3 randomized 'sample cards' would be 1 in 415, if my maths are right. roughly 0.25%

Obviously there are some problems with this simplistic approach, but it's a response to the logic of your OP. And it hints at just how unlikely it is that these cards were honest, IMO. They were stinky.

 

PAC won maybe 3 rounds

 

LOK has a powerful mind ::

 

Mex,

Maybe I've gotten this all wrong. There's never been a bad decision in boxing in the history of the sport. If you follow the sport you know it's going to happen.

All this sanctimonious garbage about this hurting the sport etc is laughable. It happens and typically what immediately follows is a rematch where there's more money to be made.

Believe it or not...this isn't the first bad decision...it won't be the last. Bad decisions haven't killed boxing yet and they won't.