Changing The Score on Television Fights

By Lyle Fitzsimmons

I know it’s only Tuesday, but it’s already been a long week.

And with the combination of a sore back from moving boxes to my family’s new residence in sunny Marion County and the corresponding wait until later today to have Internet access at the new abode, I’ve got a twinge of irritation built up as I hack away here.

Whenever I’m irritated – as anyone subject to my presence for any length of time can attest – I’m sort of a pain in the neck, with the tendency to get short and incendiary with comments and oft-times lobbing hand grenades where simple pebbles would do.

Of course, while it doesn’t exactly earn me high marks in interpersonal relations, it doesn’t always hurt in this line of work – where the hand grenade approach is usually just as warranted.

So with that disclaimer firmly in place, I’ve chosen as today’s No. 1 target anyone who does any out-loud judging of any boxing match shown on any form of broadcast television.

The Harold Ledermans of the world, to be exact… you know precisely who you are.

In all the years I’ve watched boxing – more than 30 in fact, since I sat with my dad in Grand Island, N.Y. and watched Ken Norton dispose of Duane Bobick in 58 seconds – I’ve been irked each and every time I’ve heard one of said judges describe the action of a just-completed one-sided round.

For example… “Fighter A really dominated for the whole three minutes in Round X, and, with the knockdown, he gets the extra point on the scorecard and wins it, 10-8.”

Does anyone else see the problem?

As those who’ve sat and watched a fight with me will testify, it’s within seconds after hearing the TV judge finish such a statement that I’ll clarify, pointing out that in a 10-point must system, scoring a knockdown does not earn you an extra point at all. Ten, in this case, remains 10.

Rather, it docks the fighter who was knocked down an extra point, chipping the nine he would normally have received down to eight or even seven in some extreme cases.

But no matter whether it’s Lederman, Teddy Atlas, Al Bernstein or anyone else crunching the numbers, it’s always described incorrectly, as if the winner suddenly jumped from 10 to 11 for displaying his dominance.

It drives me nuts.

So, in accordance with the philosophy of coaching talent on hand rather than teaching old dogs new tricks, I’ve decided to rebuild the system around my stuck-in-cement colleagues.

Instead of an overly complex formula involving 10 points for winners and nine or less for losers, I propose going back in time to the era when winners of a normally competitive round received one point and the losers received none.

If the round is even, a scoring crutch I try to avoid at all costs, neither fighter receives a point.

Lastly, if a fighter scores a knockdown or more and truly wins a round in decisive fashion, he gets either two or three, actually earning the “extra” point(s) too often rewarded by the TV talking heads.

Such a system incorporates the best parts of both the “must” and “rounds” approaches, simultaneously giving a fighter credit for piling up individual three-minute victories, while leaving the possibility for a trailing fighter to make up points with dominant rounds down the stretch.

It also eliminates the specter of faulty math at tabulation time.

That assumes, of course, that anyone actually licensed to score a fight would be able to handle a tally sheet awarding one, two or three points per round, as opposed to the high-end calculations involved with 10s, nines, eights and sevens.

A 115-113 bout over 12 rounds would be a much more manageable 7-5 in the new era, or – in a 10-rounder where each man won five rounds, but one scored knockdowns in two rounds and the other in one – the final would be a more sensible 7-6 instead of 94-93.

And in a bout where a champion is said to have “pitched a shutout,” the actual scorecard would correspondingly read 12-0, rather than an unnecessarily hard to dissect 120-108.

Not to mention it’d make me a lot easier to deal with on TV fight nights.

Whaddya think?

* * * * * * * * * *

I was sad to hear news of the passing of former heavyweight belt-holder Greg Page, who reportedly died in bed at his home in Louisville, Ky. and was discovered Monday morning by his wife, Patricia.

Just 50 years old, Page was severely injured in a March 2001 bout with Dale Crowe and fell into a coma for nearly a week. He had a stroke during subsequent surgery that left him paralyzed on his left side and in need of significant physical therapy for the last eight years.

According to The Associated Press, Patricia Page commented that her husband “is in a better place now.”

Trivially speaking, Page was a principal in the first heavyweight title bout I ever attended, a decision loss to Tony Tubbs at the old Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, N.Y. that cost him his WBA belt on April 29, 1985 – exactly 24 years ago Wednesday. It was his first defense of a crown he’d won by KO from South African slugger Gerrie Coetzee four months earlier.

Incidentally, other heavyweight results from that card included Tim Witherspoon’s second-round blowout of James Broad and James “Bonecrusher” Smith’s narrow 10-round decision over Jose Ribalta. And also scoring wins were Hector Camacho over journeyman Roque Montoya, and former Canadian phenoms Alex and Matthew Hilton over a dubious pair with a combined mark of 8-23-3.

Page went on to fight 48 more times after the Tubbs loss, winning 34 times but never again competing for a world title. His last victory came Oct. 9, 2000 via first-round TKO over Mark Bradley at the Longhead Café in Louisville and his career record reads 58-17-1 with 48 knockouts.

Thanks for the memories, Greg.

Lyle Fitzsimmons is a 20-year sports journalist and full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him at fitzbitz@msn.com .