No Decisions?

[freudianfloyd]

Could somebody who knows what they are talking about explain how fights ended in no decisions? This is something that has always confused me, and probably causes fans to take away merit due to the old fighters that fought under these rules.

[mickey malone]

No decision is normally when a fight comes to an end through no fault of either fighter.. Well that used to be the case, until seperate governing bodies introduced new rules.. IE: When a fight has to be stopped cos of an accidental head clash, the DC then goes to the guy whose ahead on the cards.. This is a better ruling in my opinion, and it has reduced the number of modern day ND's to a minimum..
These days, ND's only seem to be awarded when one of the fighters breaks the rules, & it only gets mentioned after the fight.. In other words, the ref makes a mistake for not awarding a DQ to the offending fighter.. Classic example, was when Thomas Molinares KO'd Marlon Starling after the bell & the ref awarded him the fight, only to be overturned by the WBA the following day, thus becoming a No Decision.. In this case, the title was declared vacant, which I don't think was at all fair on Starling.. But then, that's the WBA for you...ND's are also awarded, if either fighter fails a post fight drugs test..

[TheGreatA]

In the late 1800's/early 1900's there weren't always judges scoring the fight, so if a bout went the distance, an official decision would not be given. Most of the time local newspapers would decide who the winner was.

Sometimes no reporters covered the fight and thus no winner was ever declared.

In some cases the reports conflict with each other which is why there is controversy over some of the fights, for example Gene Tunney-Tommy Loughran which was changed from a Tunney win to a Tunney loss and finally to a no decision by BoxRec.com because the two major papers covering the fight hand different winners (New York Times giving the decision to Tunney and Philadelphia Inquirer giving the decision to Loughran).

A fighter named Al McCoy held onto the world middleweight title for several years because of the no decision rule. He lost every single title fight of his according to the newspaper reports, aside from the one he won the title in (an upset KO over the reigning champion). He always managed to survive the distance until finally being knocked out by Mike O'Dowd.