Boxing

Is It The Judges That Create Controversial Decisions… Or Is It The CompuBox?

By Janne Romppainen

15.09 - My first though after the controversial light-middleweight bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Sugar Shane Mosley, won narrowly by Mosley, was “what else is new?”. Everything was what we have seen so many times in the past. There was a big rematch between two great fighters. The fight was, in many people’s eyes, a little disappointing but when the expectations are this high, that happens. The fight was close, many rounds were decided by slight margins and after the fight, there was a huge speculation about the outcome. Some people have compared this to the biggest scandal-decisions such as Lewis-Holyfield I and Chavez-Whitaker, while others have pointed out that the fight was indeed a very close one and there were many rounds where the opinions might have divided.

Many of the people who think that De La Hoya was indeed robbed are willing to point to the CompuBox statistics, which after the bout stood at:

All punches landed

De La Hoya 221 – Mosley 127

Jabs landed

De La Hoya 106 – Mosley 33

Powerpunches landed

De La Hoya 115 – Mosley 94

These statistics indeed look like De La Hoya had totally dominated the bout. He outlanded Mosley in every department and since clean punching should be the thing that mostly affects the outcome, it should have been an easy victory for De La Hoya. If only, I might add, these statistics could be reliable.

Unlike you could think of its misleading name, the CompuBox has very little to do with computers. There are people at the ringside counting the punches and only recording the results to the computer. This means that whatever the stats show, it has been counted by single human beings. If judging a fight can be wrong since it is done by humans, then how should we expect that these punch-stats would be any more correct? In fact, there are a plenty of variables that make them much more unreliable than the scorecards ever.

Fist of all, what counts as a punch? If a fighter paws with his left jab, moving it back and forth but not really punching, is that counted as a punch at all? Or is it that every time the fighter moves his fist towards his opponent it counts as a punch? A person who counts fighter A’s punches can define some instances as punches while the person who counts fighter B’s punches would not do so. Their opinions can vary a great deal, and when you add that to the fact that all observers have their own view, you can have totally different numbers in CompuBox compared to what you have just witnessed with your own eyes.

But even if throwing a punch could be determined pretty accurately, the same can not be said about counting the punches landed. To prove this, all we need to do is to watch the scorecards of some amateur fights. In those fights there are five independent professional judges around the ring counting the punches landed. As we have seen, their scorecards can vary very much. We have seen fights in the Olympics (where there should be the best judges) where one judge has counted over 30 punches as landed whereas another judge has seen just 8 clean punches landed in the same fight. If it is this hard to decide for the professional judges, can we expect that it would be any easier for the CompuBox people? Moreover, in amateur fights there are shorter rounds and less of them. During twelve fast-paced three-minute rounds, this difference can grow unbelievably large.

There are many factors that make seeing whether a punch has landed or not so hard. The camera angle has a lot to do with it for one. If one fighter stands his back towards the camera and his opponent is straight in front of him, then it is nearly impossible to see the punches. The same goes for the judges and statisticians who sit at different sides of the ring of course. You just can’t see all the punches from everywhere. Also, when there are two fighters as fast as De La Hoya and Mosley, some punches are nearly invisible to a bare eye. For instance, in this fight there was an instance where De La Hoya fired a six-punch combination, which made the American broadcaster Jim Lampley scream, but from the slow-motion we could see that Mosley slipped all of those punches.

Another fact that affects the scoring a lot but can not be read from the final punch statistics is the effectiveness of the shots. A glancing left hook to the top of the head is counted as a power punch and so is a fully delivered right cross that lands clean on the chin. The Compubox makes no difference between them, they both are called “power punch”. Yet in scoring standards it says that clean punching (which includes both that the punch lands clean and it is effective) is the thing that counts. In this particular fight, Mosley did land the harder shots. Especially his body punches seemed to be effective. De La Hoya did a good body work as well, but none of this can be read from the punch stats.

What should also be remembered that even if De La Hoya did outland Mosley in the final statistics, it doesn’t mean he should get the verdict. If a fighter outlands his opponent in seven rounds (and wins them all) he can practically lose all the rest rounds by tens of punches, yet he wins the fight 115-113. So the total number of punches doesn’t mean even as much as the statistics of single rounds.

CompuBox statistics are interesting of course and they can give you a good indication of how the fight processes but you can not score bouts according to them. What annoys me a lot that the HBO crowd in America and especially Lampley himself always talks about them and takes them as if they were the most important factor in the fight. Many casual spectators who are not big-time boxing fans can be mislead because of it. Thusly, the CompuBox statistics may create a controversy even if there was no reason to it.

Mosley - De La Hoya rematch was a close fight indeed. I have no problem with the decision myself, but I could have accepted also a draw verdict as well as De La Hoya’s victory, the fight was decided by few rounds. For the people who are going to see the fight later, I’d like to give one instruction: turn off the voice from the tape. Do not listen to the CompuBox statistics, nor Lampley who at times was so clearly favouring De La Hoya that it wasn’t even funny. After you are done, I think that you will agree with me that even though the result can be questioned, it was not a big-time robbery.

Comments/questions: janneromppainen@hotmail.com

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