Diaz vs. Malignaggi, Is There a Solution?

By Brock Kaiser: Let’s first get this out of the way: Paulie Malignaggi definitely won that fight.

That said, the idea that poor judging or even overt bias is to blame for this miscarriage might be jumping to a premature, if not totally faulty conclusion. To be fair to all that hold this belief, false perceptions abound in the sport and often tend to eventually become reality.

For example, some people actually believe that the term “having a good chin” is more than an expression and that the body part in question actually has an effect on one’s ability to withstand a knockout. Others believe that one of the flaws with Wladimir Klitschko is that he doesn’t hit very hard (47 of his opponents would certainly offer a dissenting opinion on that notion). Some are even convinced that a volume puncher in some way posses less ability than a “one punch” knockout artist. Please excuse the crudeness of this next statement, but it hardly matters if you are hit over the head with an axe or are stabbed repeatedly with a knife, as the ending result of your misfortune will likely be the same.

But despite all the falsehoods in boxing, perhaps it’s the sport’s officiating that suffers the most from public misconception.

Most boxing judges are both honest and competent and have the goal of rendering the most accurate decision possible. Are some more competent than others? Sure. Are there some officials that may be more easily swayed by promoters than others are? Absolutely, but to throw everyone in the sport’s entire profession under the bus is foolhardy.

Yet Malignaggi himself would suggest that he doesn’t want to throw the entire profession under the bus, just the three judges at last night’s fight, and after watching his performance against Diaz and seeing the resulting score cards (118-110…really?) it is certainly hard to argue with him.

Which brings us to this: if there truly isn’t malicious or careless intent in officiating, what is to blame for the current state of judging?

The first thing to understand is that the best seat in the house is where you are likely reading this now. That is to say, no matter how much money you have paid for that ringside seat, watching a fight from your television at home will always give you the best view of the action.

The reason for this is that the studio control room is constantly switching the camera view in order to provide the best possible angle for its viewers. This in turn ensures that the person watching at home rarely misses any of the action.

Conversely, getting multiple viewing angles and perspectives is not realistic when sitting at the arena. Unless you want to risk “row jumping” to a better seat (not advised with fight fans), your seat is going to provide you with a single line of sight. So when the action between the boxers is occurring on the opposite side of the ring from your point of vision, punches get missed and are easily misinterpreted.

Fans might be surprised to know that this disadvantage isn’t any different for judges who have an even better seat than they do. No matter how close to the ring, all judges will at times miss exchanges between the boxers during parts of the fight, and sometimes even during significant portions of a round. This means that since good judges will never guess whether a punch landed or not, it could legitimately lead to two otherwise competent judges seeing the same round go to opposite boxers depending on what they actually did see.

Another problem is that boxing officials are human and as a result, crowd bias sometimes plays a role in their thinking. Crowd reactions are of course suspect in general as there are at least two generations of fight fans now that have been brought up on the Rocky movies and believe that a blow to the head actually produces a gratifying “whapping” noise. Because of this when a loud (but benign) sound results when the hometown favorite hits the gloves of his opponent, many fans automatically concludes it to be a scoring blow and predictably responds, sometimes swaying the benefit of the doubt in their favorite with the judges.

Another problem for boxing is how professional fights are scored. Judging is way too subjective at the professional level and this often leads to controversy. At the amateur level the force of a scoring blow is only relevant in that it was in fact a scoring blow. Thus, it doesn’t even matter if a boxer knocked his opponent down multiple times in their fight as only the total number of scoring blows are factored in the final tally.

Conversely, at the professional level it is left up to the judges to decide if they are to give the round to the boxer with the most scoring blows, or to the one that showed most power. (It would be fair to suspect that this discrepancy is exactly why Diaz came out on top in his fight against Malignaggi.)

So, what is the solution to the sport’s scoring issues?

One possible answer is to increase the number of judges that score a fight from three to five. Place one judge at each of the four corners of the ring with one “roamer” that would move to a different corner at each round. This would ensure that less of the action gets missed as each side of the ring was manned at all times. As well, more eyes on the fight would lend itself to a more fair decision should one or two judges be totally off in the their scoring for whatever reason.

Another way to ensure accountability would be that if any particular judge’s scorecard if off, say, four or more rounds from the other officials, they would automatically be called into that state’s athletic commission where the fight took place and asked to justify their scoring. This would not be a punishment or even an assumption of guilt, but rather an evaluation of the judge’s scoring and to verify that what they saw was at least reasonable. (An interesting irony in scoring close fights is that they often have the greatest contrariety between judges as close rounds could legitimately be seen either way and sometimes lead to widely differing final scores between two officials.)

Finally, take some of the subjectivity out of scoring a fight. Perhaps like at the amateur level judges could start counting scoring blows in which to determine which boxer won the round. As well, you could still reward boxers for power punches (while keeping some of the subjectivity in judging) by making them worth two points instead of just one.

This certainly isn’t going to end all the controversy at the end of a fight, as nothing is perfect in sports. Officials are always going to have the most thankless job in the profession and will only receive brief moments of gratitude by the fighters that won and the fans that rooted for them. However, it should also not be forgotten that while there is room for improvement, those who judge the bouts and those who simply watch them do in fact share the goal of having a fair and unbiased decision of its outcome.