Mauricio Sulaiman has been around boxing long enough to know his ongoing push to expand the judging panel at the most significant fights is an uphill challenge.

“Everyone seems to be comfortable with the usual way [and] resistant to change,” the World Boxing Council president told Boxing Scene on Thursday.

But following another weekend of head-rattling scorecards in the co-main and main event of the Premier Boxing Champions’ Amazon Prime Video pay-per-view card in Las Vegas, Sulaiman believes his pitch is a sound one.

Sulaiman is set to propose a plan to a slew of officials, including sanctioning body personnel and promoters, to place six judges at ringside on May 18 for the Tyson Fury-Oleksandr Usyk bout for the undisputed heavyweight title in Saudi Arabia.

“The more highly skilled judges we have working together, the better,” Sulaiman said.

While some disagree – including the Association of Boxing Commissions President Mike Mazzulli – Sulaiman argues that boxing is left too vulnerable to bad decisions when only three judges are on a panel.

And exposing Fury-Usyk to that could erupt into a calamity.

“If you have a fight when two judges don’t have a good night, that fight is decided, 2-1, by bad cards,” Sulaiman said. “If that happens with six judges, the correct fighter wins, 4-2.

“We’ve had too many split decisions and majority decision fights over the last few months. This is not OK.”

Indeed, on Saturday, the judge Chris Flores somehow had the defending WBA 140-pound champion Rolando Romero defeating Isaac Cruz 66-65 after seven rounds – despite the facts that Romero had been badly wobbled by an attack in the early rounds, fought tentatively from then on, and even had a point deducted by the referee Thomas Taylor for holding.

In the eighth round Cruz rendered Flores’ card moot by stopping Romero with a barrage of punches that earned him a stoppage victory and made him the newest world champion from Mexico.

The judges Max DeLuca (69-63) and Patricia Morse Jarman (68-64), meanwhile, had Cruz cruising to victory.

What kind of repercussions does Flores confront for scoring the bout that way?

It varies, according to each commission, Mazzulli said – and the Nevada Athletic Commission executive director Jeff Mullen did not return telephone messages left for him by Boxing Scene.

“I’ve demanded things like ABC training, telling [judges], ‘Do it or you’re not working,’” Mazzulli said. “And other guys I’ve sat on the bench.”

Saturday’s main event between the WBO light-middleweight title-holder Tim Tszyu and his replacement opponent Sebastian Fundora went haywire almost immediately. Fundora suffered a broken, bloodied nose in the first round, and Tszyu then sustained a deep gash on the top of his head that threatened to turn it into a no-contest.

The horrifically bloody fight lasted all the way to the scorecards, at which point the veteran judge Tim Cheatham turned in a card favoring Tszyu, 116-112. David Sutherland had it 115-113 for Fundora, and Steve Weisfeld 116-112 for Fundora.

“Cheatham is one of the top six judges in the world,” Mazzulli said.

“But was he Saturday night, when it mattered most?”

Fundora landed 19 more punches on Tszyu, and used his 80-inch reach to out-jab the outgoing champion 93-39.

“At this present time, the ABC feels if three can judge a fight effectively, why does it take five or six to do it?” Mazzulli said. “As of now, this [change] is not something we’re even thinking about. The amount of questionable decisions we’ve had is minimal.”

Some, however, have been scarring. Timothy Bradley Jr.’s first fight against Manny Pacquiao comes to mind, as does the repeat offender C.J. Ross calling Floyd Mayweather’s one-sided dissection of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez a draw in 2013. Adalaide Byrd saw it for Alvarez as a one-sided rout (118-110), in what was his first, tightly contested draw against Gennadiy Golovkin.

Those flawed scorecards are remembered as equally as those outcomes 

and, reckless or not, bad judging inspires critics to point to the seedy behavior of boxing’s past while also souring bettors who may otherwise help elevate pay-per-view buys, live-gate figures and television ratings.

“I’m open to new ideas, but I don’t even know how six judges would work,” Mazzulli said.

Sulaiman said he would place two judges at three sides of the ring in Saudi Arabia, gather the cards, and let a majority opinion emerge from there. The fights would be scored in the usual manner, and the scorecards would be turned in individually, with any combination of a 4-2, 5-1 or 6-0 split producing a winner.

Yes, there would be an additional expense to retain the services of six judges, Sulaiman said, but he noted that Fury-Usyk could stand as one of the richest bouts in history.

An individual familiar with assignments said the expected choice for a referee for Fury-Usyk, by the way, is the respected Harvey Dock, who worked Tszyu-Fundora.

“It’s easy to say judges need to be better when things go wrong, but why not bring in the top six judges in the world for a major championship fight like this – judges who have been most consistent – and let them decide these important fights?” Sulaiman asked. “If not, we can have someone scoring who may have a bad night, or even be experiencing personal problems.

“Having three judges creates a very thin line between the right result and catastrophe. This is about the biggest fight in history, and controversy would be so damaging.”