Bad Decisions: What Can Be Done About Them?
“WHAT FIGHT WAS HE WATCHING?!??”
“IS SHE KIDDING ME!?!?”
“THIS IS SOME BU*^$*^%!!!”
Those are just some of the reactions I have heard over the years after a ‘bad decision’ was declared. I, myself, have watched a decision go through and cringe at it in disbelief. I’ve seen a fighter train the hardest they have in their career – because they know they are at the biggest fight of their life – only to lose a decision because the other fighter is at home; and are served a home cooked meal!
Home Cooked Meal. –sports term; 1. When the home team/boxer/or whatever is at home and receives what we like to believe is a small advantage. But, it’s larger than that to the people or person that gets cheated.
Anytime there is money involved, you will have some form of corruption, so boxing is no different. Promoters buy decisions all the time and they will always do this unless there is something done that can make it harder to simply pay a person to have their fighter ahead at the end. I personally do not believe anything drastic will ever get done because it would mess up an underground hustle that is making a lot of people rich.
When you talk about bad decisions, it is kind of a touchy subject because not all judges look at the same thing. Some judges will score a round for the busier fighter, while another judge will score the round for the person that landed the harder punches. Since there is no real right or wrong way to judge the rounds, you can have some judges that will have a questionable score card at the end of the fight. I personally think every judge should have a list of what they judge by, so we can actually go back and see why they scored the way they did. This would hold judges accountable for their score cards. If I’m a judge, and I know that everyone already knows what I’m looking for, I would be hesitant to accept money because I would be the one that would have to explain myself. Just a thought.
