The Sport Of Boxing, Without Judges?

I've been a boxing fan for a good few years now, and love all types of different styles of fights, even the odd snoozefest. my all time favorite is pernell whitaker. whenever i watch any of his fights am in awe of his talent, although to many, a good insomnia medicine. After watching the decisions to his fights vs JCC & ODLH, i was thinking 'can judges be taken away with new technology?'

is there any other ways in which the outcome of a fight can be decided without the use of 3 judges at ringside or even an aid for judges to make their decision besides.. watching the contest?
compubox counts the number/type of punch(es) thrown each round and the number landed, but does that tell the story of a fight or can it be used to aid for judges?

Technology is advancing at an alarming rate, and size of components and price is going down so i was thinking could gloves be (safely) inserted with some sort of force sensor/load cell? together to aid judges at ringside to account for KD's...


this is all hypothetical, as we all know, boxing is far too corrupt to change.

sweet_pea wrote:

is there any other ways in which the outcome of a fight can be decided without the use of 3 judges at ringside or even an aid for judges to make their decision besides.. watching the contest?

Fight to the finish, was good enough for Cribb, Belcher and Spring should be good enough for today's fancy dans, no more contrversial scorecards if we return to the good old days.

Is there a way to make watch stop time and display the knockers of the lady I'm looking at?

If so, let me know...

If there isn't, I'll just stick to a watch that tells the time.

Cheers

alma wrote:Most sports have some kind of officials though. Not sure there's any way round it, unless they bring back the no decision era

i was thinking along the lines of load cells inside the gloves, measuring force, area and velocity.. that, + compubox numbers.. would that tell the story of a fight?

Using that technology would mean Tyson Fury smacking himself in the face would be a scoring shot?

Any load cell technology in a glove would presumably cover the full area of the contact surface? This might add weight to the glove; tiring the fighters or giving a fist more momentum thus making it more dangerous.

For instance, hand wrap lengths are tightly controlled as to not provide an unfair advantage. For that reason, I can't envisage a future where a foreign body would be permitted to be inserted into a glove.

However boxing needs original thinkers to help it progress with the times..... so keep it up!

Well its highly subjectively scored to begin with, so it doesnt really adhere to being a sport that is scored by quantifiable measurements (in the pros).

I have thought in the past that given the guidelines used to score a round in pro boxing are:

Ring Generalship
Clean and Hard Punching
Effective Aggresion
Defence

That if you assign a fighter a score between 1-5 in each category per round and who ever has a higher score wins the round. Its still ultimately subjective scoring though and judges tend to favour different elements.

manos de piedra wrote:Well its highly subjectively scored to begin with, so it doesnt really adhere to being a sport that is scored by quantifiable measurements (in the pros).

I have thought in the past that given the guidelines used to score a round in pro boxing are:

Ring Generalship
Clean and Hard Punching
Effective Aggresion
Defence

That if you assign a fighter a score between 1-5 in each category per round and who ever has a higher score wins the round. Its still ultimately subjective scoring though and judges tend to favour different elements.

Crikey, can you imaging Dave Paris or Terry O'Connor trying to work that out? They'd make scorecards even harder to explain :P

They might need the Hatman for assistance

TheMackemMawler wrote:Any load cell technology in a glove would presumably cover the full area of the contact surface? This might add weight to the glove; tiring the fighters or giving a fist more momentum thus making it more dangerous.

For instance, hand wrap lengths are tightly controlled as to not provide an unfair advantage. For that reason, I can't envisage a future where a foreign body would be permitted to be inserted into a glove.

However boxing needs original thinkers to help it progress with the times..... so keep it up!

If for instance the weight could be kept to a minimum as not to give either fighter an advantage..

Only asking as i am thinkin of using this as an engineerin project of mine, even though i know no sanctioning bodies will allow such tech.. just need to have a product that works in principle.

The load cells would gather velocity force and area (can indicate clean blows) which could give an indication of a punch.. few obvious problems il need to work out such as glancing/blocked punches. This would all be sent to an external device for judges to see... etc

Did you ever hear about this Sweet Pea?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128276.200-smart-boxing-vest-will-pull-no-punches.html

Was developed last year, but I don't think it was ever trialed.

sweet_pea wrote:

TheMackemMawler wrote:Any load cell technology in a glove would presumably cover the full area of the contact surface? This might add weight to the glove; tiring the fighters or giving a fist more momentum thus making it more dangerous.

For instance, hand wrap lengths are tightly controlled as to not provide an unfair advantage. For that reason, I can't envisage a future where a foreign body would be permitted to be inserted into a glove.

However boxing needs original thinkers to help it progress with the times..... so keep it up!

If for instance the weight could be kept to a minimum as not to give either fighter an advantage..

Only asking as i am thinkin of using this as an engineerin project of mine, even though i know no sanctioning bodies will allow such tech.. just need to have a product that works in principle.

The load cells would gather velocity force and area (can indicate clean blows) which could give an indication of a punch.. few obvious problems il need to work out such as glancing/blocked punches. This would all be sent to an external device for judges to see... etc

The vector of a punch and the angle of impact may be problematic when garnering force measurements? I'm not sure how you'd measure velocity in free space for an object moving in 3 dimensions? I'd assume you'd use 3 accelerometers orthogonal to each other, each measuring the x-y-z axis and then integrate for velocity? Whatever you have in mind I doubt it's practical mate. I think it would be too expensive to produce, and I don't think miniaturisation, resilience to impact and affordability are compatible concepts.

And once you've solved the engineering problem, you then have the small problem of how the data will be used to indicate the winner of a fight, and the added problem of training people to interpreting the data.

In all, it's an extremely convoluted method of deciding who "punches each other the best", when all we need to do is judge whether red or blue wins.

Its an interesting concept design but, perhaps, better suited to sports science rather than competition; even so there are much simpler methods of gaining the same information.

6oldenbhoy wrote:Did you ever hear about this Sweet Pea?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128276.200-smart-boxing-vest-will-pull-no-punches.html

Was developed last year, but I don't think it was ever trialed.

A simple design, but it doesn't take into account force (like what sweetpea is proposing)

And as you know, in amateur boxing, punches must land with sufficient force (whatever that means) to score.