By Dan Ambrose: In watching last Saturday’s fight between WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns and Jose Gonzalez, it was pretty sad to see the Puerto Rican fighter Gonzalez quitting on his stool after the 9th round with a sizable 3-round lead on all of the scorecards.
Later after the fight, Gonzalez that he would have never quit had he known that he was ahead that much in the fight. Gonzalez thought the fight was extremely close, and that was why he chose to quit.
Having seen how WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez benefited greatly with the open scoring for his recent win over WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout last month in San Antonio, Texas, I wonder if Gonzalez would have quit on his stool if he had known how much of a lead he had after 8 rounds.
With the semi-open scoring that was used in the Canelo-Trout fight, the scores were given to each fighter after the 4th and 8th rounds, which mean that if Gonzalez was told that he was up by 4 rounds after the 8th, he would have felt comfortable to continue fighting until the very end.
My point in bringing this up is that semi-open scoring or full open scoring really benefits the fighter that the judges are giving all the rounds to, like in the Canelo-Trout fight.
When you know you’ve got a big lead, you can milk the lead by fighting defensively and doing as little as possible in order to preserve the lead.
I totally believe that had the semi-open scoring been used for the Burns-Gonzalez fight last Saturday night, Gonzalez would have cruised to a 12 round decision by doing just enough to last out the fight.
I think the open scoring helps out the fighter with the lead in a huge way and I think it needs to be done away with. I also believe the Canelo vs. Trout fight needs to take place again without open scoring because I feel it tainted the results of the fight.
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