NOTE: This is the second part of a two-part story. To read Part I, click here.


Rarely does dumb luck determine results in sports. But often it’s timing, a close cousin of luck, that makes all the difference.

New York Jets fans probably wouldn’t tell you their team is in the AFC Championship game based primarily on luck. But they have to admit their team has enjoyed good timing -- squeaking into the playoffs by happening upon opponents with nothing to play for in each of their last two regular-season games, then watching opposing kickers blow two easy field goals in each of their two playoff games.

In tennis, it’s not about how many games you win, but rather when you win them. One player can break his opponent’s serve six times and never have his own serve broken and still lose 0-6, 0-6, 7-6, 7-6, 7-6. When the skill levels are comparable, timing can make all the difference.

The scoring of a boxing match calls upon similar factors. A fighter shouldn’t be rewarded for having superior luck, but he can be rewarded for his timing, for knowing how to eke out close rounds. A boxer can lose five of 12 rounds decisively and win the other seven by the margin of just a punch or two, and he’ll win the bout.

This is something the public must understand -- that boxing is scored on a round-by-round basis and not at the end of the fight. Before we can explore the solutions for scorecards that appear to contradict reality, we must grasp the difference between perceived end-of-fight reality and actual one-round-at-a-time reality.

“I tell people this all the time: A 12-round boxing match is actually 12 one-round matches. Every round is an independent event,” said Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director Keith Kizer. “We had a fight here about three years ago, Gerry Penalosa vs. Daniel Ponce De Leon, very competitive fight, but one judge had it 120-108 for Ponce De Leon and the other two had it 119-109 for Ponce De Leon. A lot of people were saying, ‘That was a competitive fight, how could it be 12-0 or 11-1 in rounds?’ Well, you look at each round, De Leon didn’t win them by much, but he did win 11 or 12 rounds in my opinion.

“As athletic director, I don’t look at the overall scores to determine whether a judge got it right or wrong. I’ll use that as a starting point, but really, I’ll look at the rounds where a judge differed from conventional wisdom. And I’ll ask was that round close enough where it could have gone either way, and if it was, then you can’t say the judge got it wrong.”

One other critical element the public must understand before declaring a score to be bogus is that the three judges are all seated on different sides of the ring to account for the fact that a fight does not appear the same from every angle. Kizer noted that HBO did a study following the second Shane Mosley-Oscar De La Hoya fight -- a Nevada fight with highly scrutinized scoring -- in which they asked one control group to judge the fight after watching it exclusively using the footage recorded by a hard camera on one side of the ring, then asked another control group to judge it using footage recorded from an alternate side of the ring.

All three official judges scored that fight 115-113 for Mosley. The study found that the majority of one control group scored it that same way, while the other had it 115-113 for De La Hoya.

With this information in mind, most commissioners won’t lose sleep over a score just because the final tally seems dubious to the layperson. For the commissioner to get worked up, there have to be rounds that were scored curiously regardless of where the judge was sitting.

Unfortunately, that sentence describes the two most controversial scorecards of 2009, Gale Van Hoy’s 118-110 card in the first Juan Diaz-Paulie Malignaggi fight and Pierre Benoist’s 119-110 submission in the Paul Williams-Sergio Martinez battle.

So once we’ve identified what actually qualifies as flawed judging, what can be done to improve scoring and prevent recurrences?

Many experts believe boxing judges should be taught to use uniform scoring criteria, insisting that the current system allows for too much room for interpretation based on a judge’s style preference.

“The ABC (Association of Boxing Commissions) needs to pick a set criteria for scoring,” opined New Jersey Commission head Aaron Davis. “If we have that, and then we make it mandatory for judges to attend the ABC’s classes, we could see some togetherness in style. Some judges go by technique, some go by power punches, some go by the volume of punches, and that shouldn’t be the case.”

Van Hoy used the style argument to support the way he scored most of the rounds in Diaz-Malignaggi, saying he put little stock in what he termed the “pitty-pat” punches of Malignaggi.

Retired Nevada judge Chuck Giampa disagreed with Van Hoy’s scorecard in the Diaz-Malignaggi fight but agrees with his philosophy -- that punches he perceives as hurtful should count more than anything else. Giampa doesn’t necessarily fall in line with Davis’ thinking that different judges preferring different styles is a bad thing.

“If you talk to a baseball umpire, he’s got his own strike zone,” Giampa said. “As long as he’s consistent in both the top of the inning and the bottom of the inning, even if the replay shows he’s wrong, he made a decision based on his philosophy. And it’s the same way with boxing judges. They have to be true to their philosophy.

“I was criticized for the way I scored the [first Julio Cesar] Chavez-[Meldrick] Taylor fight, where I had Chavez winning going into the last round, but I stand by that score. Taylor caught a beating in there and that’s how I saw it, and 20 years later, more people seem to agree with me. Jim Lampley told me recently, ‘Chuck, I gotta tell you, I ripped you 20 years ago on that fight, but you obviously saw something that we didn’t see. You saw the effectiveness of the punches and Taylor was never the same after that.’”

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that continued education for judges, through classes and seminars, is a must. And Kizer feels that perhaps even more important than the periodic seminars are the meetings a commissioner should hold with his officials in the immediate aftermath of a fight card.

“After every fight, we have a postfight meeting,” Kizer said. “Those meetings are great for breeding discussion. For example, in [Manny] Pacquiao vs. [Miguel] Cotto, there was a round where Cotto won most of the round but he got knocked down in the round. Two of the judges -- I think it was Adelaide Byrd and Dave Moretti -- they went 10-9 Pacquiao. And Duane Ford went 10-8. And it’s arguable both ways. But we had all three judges explain why they went the way they did, and that was good for me to hear. But also it was good for all of the other judges to hear, because our goal is to have all these judges have the same criteria.”

It’s important to note that Cole did discuss Diaz-Malignaggi with Van Hoy and Davis did have a postfight meeting with Benoist after Williams-Martinez.

“If there is a score that I can’t explain, I’m going to go to the judge and have the judge explain it,” Davis said. “We can agree, or we can agree to disagree on a decision, but I want to make sure that the public and the fighters can be guaranteed a good, fair fight. After Pierre’s decision, I went and talked with him, he told me how he scored each round, we went through it round by round. I think a lot of it came down to style and what he preferred. Maybe Pierre had a bad night, but he’s done great work for years, so for me to say he should never judge again, that would be stupid for the sport of boxing and it would be stupid for me.”

The commissioners all agree on that point, that one controversial scorecard should never be the end of someone’s judging career. So how should they “punish” a struggling judge?

Many fans would push for a demotion from 12-rounders to four- or six-rounders, but commissioners tend not to pursue that line because of their philosophy that prelim fights should be taken just as seriously as title fights.

“Being a boxing judge is a hell of a responsibility, whether it’s a four-round fight or a world-title fight,” Cole said. “It’s a hell of a responsibility to determine who was the better man on that particular night.”

“I was trained that a four-rounder is as important as a title fight,” Giampa seconded. “In fact, you can screw up a round in a 12-round fight and still have the right guy winning. There’s not a lot of leeway in a four-round fight. One round can change everything, and you’re often talking about young fighters with undefeated records where winning means everything.”

Instead, one approach that seems popular is to have an experienced and trusted judge shadow a judge who’s coming off a bad fight, to have them watch a couple of fights together from ringside and discuss their scoring in each round.

Another approach Giampa recommends is assigning the judge about whom you have concerns to a fight where you also assign two of your most reliable judges. That way, if the questionable judge has a second illogical scorecard, at least there’s a likelihood it will be overruled by the other two judges and no fighter’s career will be derailed while the commissioner determines whether the judge is still fit to officiate.

Whatever your approach to rehabilitating a disgraced judge, one goal should be to restore his confidence. Heavy criticism can make a judge question himself to the point where he can’t put the past out of his mind while presiding over future fights. That’s why demotions typically don't work well.

A little positive reinforcement never hurts, especially when you consider how much negative energy a judge absorbs when he screws up.

“I think the criticism has been unfair,” Van Hoy said. “Look at this fact: I’ve never received a word of compliment on the good scores I’ve turned in over the years. Nobody ever says you did good. But I know I’m a good judge, and my record supports it.”

At this particular moment, the general boxing public probably wouldn’t agree with that last statement. But with the passage of time, maybe Van Hoy will silence the critics. The same goes for Benoist.

But if not, if either of them hands in a scorecard as indefensible as the ones they did in high-profile bouts last year, then the commissioners can solve these judging problems in the simplest way possible. Judging, as Dickie Cole noted, is “a hell of a responsibility.” And no fighter should have his record permanently affected by a judge who can’t live up to that responsibility.

RASKIN’S RANTS

• As long as I just spouted off some 4,000 words on controversial decisions, I ought to comment on the Vanes Martirosyan-Kassim Ouma scoring from this past Saturday night. That was a classic case of “debatable” but not “indefensible.” I personally thought the scores in Martirosyan’s favor seemed a tad wide; it probably should have been a one-point fight one way or the other. But the bigger question is this: Where the heck did that performance from Ouma come from? It seemed to me that Martirosyan was thrown off all fight by the mere fact that he had a live body in front of him. Meanwhile, one Web site called it “Martirosyan’s best performance to date.” Huh? Later in the same piece, it was revealed that The Adventures Of Rocky & Bullwinkle represents the finest work of Robert DeNiro and that Guns ‘N Roses peaked with The Spaghetti Incident.

• It was the band Toad The Wet Sprocket who sang in 1991, “Just make sure I’m around when you’ve finally got something to say.” No truth to the rumor that the song is all about the work of B.J. Flores on Friday Night Fights.

• Along similar lines, just make sure I’m around when Demetrius Andrade is fighting someone who doesn’t remind me of Verne Troyer.

• This just in: Bernard Hopkins is going to fight a rematch with Morrade Hakkar on April 17. There, now don’t you feel better about Hopkins-Jones II?

Eric Raskin can be reached at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.