Comments Thread For: Boxing judge Tom Schrecks debut column: the scoring criteria and the concept of doing damage

[CubanGuyNYC]

The only time I've seen a breakdown like this on boxing scoring was Steve Weisfeld's version that is online on PBC. There are inconsistencies between the this article and Steve's.

Weisfeld talks about amount of clean punches vs how hard punches are. Tom doesn't cover this with clarity imo, although he does talk about doing damage. But to be clear, 5 clean landed jabs that have a discernible effect vs one clean hook that appears to have a bigger effect than those sweet, effective 5 jabs combined...which is worth more in terms of scoring? I've always thought that it is the single hook. If that did more damage, had a bigger effect (including taking into account the ring generalship or effective aggression derived from controlling the action for a decent period of the round with those 5 jabs) then it is worth more on the score card that those 5 jabs. Is this the case Tom?

Also, I could have sworn that Weisfeld's article ranked the criteria from most important to least important as clean punches, effective aggression, defense, ring generalship. However, that doesn't seem to be the case now.
Tom doesn't explicit state their ranking, but just says "starting our way at the bottom and moving to the top." - What does this mean? Is bottom criteria the least important criteria? if so that gives us from most important criteria to least: Clean punches, Effective aggression, ring generalship, defense.
Whatever their meaning, the two judges didn't list the criteria in the same order.


Something I've wondered about is how when Amir Khan went up two weight divisions to fight Canelo, he looked to me to be running rings around Canelo in the first few rounds with his feather fisted (but clean landed) punches. Canelo got him to the body and Khan noticeably slowed down, and then about the next round Canelo nailed him with that shot and the fight was over. But after the fight, from memory, Canelo was up on at least two of the cards. The only way that could be imo is A. The Canelo factor with judges, or B. Khan's shots that were landing cleanly, were deemed not to have hardly any affect on Canelo (which they weren't really) so the rounds got scored to Canelo for some other factor such as ring generalship. Seeing as Khan was a much smaller fighter with much much less power, this should mean based on the way that that both Tom and Steve describe "clean punches" which is the effect they have, or the damage they cause, that there was no way Khan could have possibly won that fight....without knocking Canelo out, as he simply lacked the power to put a dent in Canelo. Obviously the fight was a total mismatch that should never have been sanctioned anyway, but if this is the case, how can you have a fight that realistically one fighter simply cannot win based on the scoring criteria? There are probably similar examples that exist within the same weight class also.

Scoring a fight is as much an art as it is a science. Lots of subjectivity involved, even if you agree on the scoring criteria. There are degrees of power and effectiveness to every punch. Very difficult to say “five light punches equals one hard blow” — although admittedly I’ve struggled with that notion myself. Thankfully most fights aren’t too tough to score. But even then you get robberies the likes of which you can’t explain in any fashion. Just recently I was looking at the scores from the Espinoza-Ramirez rematch. One judge had it for Divino after five rounds. I couldn’t understand how that was even possible. Yet, there it was.