Replies

[Jack 1000]

I always hear when their are really bad decisions in boxing, from either refs or judges, they are usually broken down into one of three categories:

Incompetence

Favoritism

Corruption

Here is my take on each issue:

Incompetence: It happens with officials who do not have the experience to judge or ref fights. However, I believe that if most fights could be attributed to incompetence, you would have almost a 50/50 split with "stupid" votes going to journeymen fighters and the other half of the time, marquee fighters not getting the nod. If incompetence was the issue, we would be seeing more fighters with weaker records getting the benefit of the doubt from officials.

Favoritism: In my view, the biggest problem in boxing. Judges often lean for the hometown fighter, the undefeated fighter with the big name, or the boxer with a flamboyant and powerful prompter and too often fear the consequences when they don't. Ref Octavio Meyran defended his officiating in the Douglas-Tyson fight over the controversial "long" count incident. Don King, Jose Sulaiman of the WBC, wanted Douglas stripped because they could not stand the idea of a 42-1 long shoot winning over the at the time best P4P fighter in the world. When Octavio Mayran was NEVER assigned to another high profile fight something just did not seem right with that decision. The scoring of the two Japanese judges carding a draw, and having Tyson a point ahead and the negative attitude the powers that be took toward Buster for those 36 hours or so before everyone agreed he was champion, show political bias that can not be forgotten.

Corruption: It's been in boxing since the beginning of time. Do you think it is just as rampant as it was in the 50's-60's when the mob controlled boxing? What specific instances of proven corruption have you seen in boxing that go beyond incompetence or Favoritism? You can go back to Jake Lamotta's sworn testimony for his fight against Billy Fox, where he told a Senate sub-committee that he had thrown the fight and had to, to get a shot at Marcel Cerdan. Does boxing have a new kind of mob with the alphabet federations, Arum and King, non-respected weight classes?

How do you prove corruption in boxing to get a conviction in a court of law?

Jack

[pesticid]

That's why it's so hard to bet on boxing. Even if you pick the winner, it's not likely that he'll be declared as one.