Gilberto Jesus Mendoza, President of the World Boxing Association (WBA), held a meeting with press members to discuss the topics of judges and controversial decisions. During the meeting he discussed how to evaluate a fight as well as how to evaluate the judges.
Mendoza began explaining the criteria to score a fight, keeping in mind: effectiveness, offense, defense, technique and sportsmanship, taking into account the positive elements of the round, such as, clean and strong punches, effective punches, skillful and intelligent defense of the boxer, aggressiveness, and his ability and courage.
However, the WBA leader explained that there are no more than 10 controversial fights in all of the WBA sanctioned bouts since 2012.
“This is an example that our officials are consistent in their scoring,” said Mendoza.
He added that in the United States, the judges are appointed by the local commissions according to the Muhammad Ali Safety Act, and all of the sanctioning bodies have little participation in the process. Although he revealed that the sanctioning bodes are in communication to take a stand and make their voices heard.
“In all our fights, especially those that we consider to be very close are evaluated by our International officials’ committee judges, and we study each judge's consistency to know if he/she had a bad night or if he/she has failed in several scenarios," Mendoza said.
He also added, “We also have a procedure to sanction our official should it be necessary, first it is verbal, then in writing and, later, if it is deemed necessary and depending on the offense, a punishment is chosen, but throughout the procedure we are bound to do it pedagogically to educate rather than punish."
Mendoza also discussed the role of the press and he thinks that before labeling a fight as controversial we should analyze the fight to determine if it was really controversial, because he believes that a close fight that generates different viewpoints on the outcome is not a controversial fight.
The WBA is working to improve its performance through seminars with the officials, which helps reduce errors in their fights, and they also continue to evaluate every bout that is sanctioned by their organization.