Great News for Amateur Boxing: A New Scoring System

Here's an article I ran across last night. It's from a March 8, 2011 blog entry by Michael Rivest, over at timesunion.com. I thought those interested in amateur boxing might welcome the news, if they haven't already heard it. Great News for Amateur Boxing: A New Scoring System That’s right, folks. I’ll have more details on this in the coming week, but I wanted to let you know this much right now. I received a call last night from Dr. Charles Butler of the International Boxing Association (AIBA) Executive Committee, letting me know that AIBA has approved a new scoring system for amateur boxing at the big events. Among its changes are the elimination of the 1-second window and the uncoupling of judges scores. The system should be in place within ten days and, yes, it will be used in the 2012 Olypmics. For fans of amateur boxing, this is about as good as news can get. The computerized scoring system, implemented internationally in 1992, although well-intentioned, damaged the sport. It made it what amateur boxing should never, ever, be: boring. Although many say the system did what it was designed to do, which was to identify and weed out judges who played favorites, it brought its own nightmare of unfairness and alteration of the sport. The computerized system’s most notable problem has been the 1-second window. Briefly, in order for a blow to register in the system, three of the five judges had to click the appropriate button on their key pads. But each time a judge clicked, it opened a 1- second “window.” Two more judges had to click within that window for the scoring blow to count. If they were a little slow and the second went by, too bad; it was too late for the punch to count. So you can imagine that many actual punches were destined to go unrecognized. Combination punching, essential to boxing became pointless, since any boxer’s combination lands with a second (It had better, right?). The system encouraged a kind of boxing that has looked more like fencing, where opponents danced around each other, throwing one punch at at time. Good riddance. It’s a first step to bringing amateur boxing back to the what it should be and always was: exciting. Stay tuned. I’ll be talking about the scoring system changes in more detail real soon. I just wanted you to put you in a good mood.