the American judge who cost Raymundo Beltran the title last night...

Do any of the US fight fans know if he has a history of badly scoring fights, like, say, our very own Ian John-Lewis does over here?

Make no mistake about it, Beltran won that fight. It was by no means a landslide, Burns won five, in the very least four rounds, and a couple of others were very tight. I scored the fight exactly the same as World Boxing News (see link), 112-115 Beltran. Burns clearly won the opening round, rounds six and seven, and ended the fight the stronger, but Beltran had spells of dominance inbetween. People who claim Burns only won one or two rounds are obviously trolls, so we'll take no notice of them.

http://www.worldboxingnews.net/news/scorecards/2013/09/07/wbn-live-scorecard-ricky-burns-v-ray-beltran.html

Nobody can have any real complaints with the judge scoring the bout 114-114. All that really takes is for someone to see two rounds differently, but the American judge who gave the fight to Burns by three points, especially bearing in mind the clear 10-8 round, should have questions to answer.

Bad judges are bad judges, i guess. Does this American guy have any form?

In a lot of these title fights there always seems to be one judge who scores the fight way off in favour of the defending champion. That's politics at play.

The judges probably draw straws as to who is going to over egg it for the champ. That's if the boxing organization wants to keep the current champ in place due to him being a good money earner.


The promotors and managers along with the boxing organizations are to blame for this as Beltran eloquently said in his post fight interview.

Strongback wrote:In a lot of these title fights there always seems to be one judge who scores the fight way off in favour of the defending champion.  That's politics at play.  

The judges probably draw straws as to who is going to over egg it for the champ.  That's if the boxing organization wants to keep the current champ in place due to him being a good money earner.

The promotors and managers along with the boxing organizations are to blame for this as Beltran eloquently said in his post fight interview.

This makes sense. So rather than things necessarily being "home decisions" as such, they're organisation's decisions to protect the big future fights.

The bigger the promoter the more likely the corruption. Look at the biggest promoters in Europe and you'll see the dodgiest decisions. The big promoters put on big cards and that puts money in the organizations pockets.

It isn't the home fighter as much as the home promoter being able to control things. Nice hotel for the judges, wined and dined, goodies thrown in. It's not hard to see how it works when the money is flowing.

monzon wrote:
Nobody can have any real complaints with the judge scoring the bout 114-114. All that really takes is for someone to see two rounds differently

I don't even agree with this reasoning. First of all, that card is generous. Ricky's 'banker' rounds were 1, 7, 12. Rounds 6 and 11 are being very generous. If we go down that path, then round 2 could be given to Burns as well. But that's 6 rounds to Burns minus the KD. Its all very well saying 'you only need to see one more round differently'. But, which one? I can't, for the life of me, see which of the remaining rounds you could either award to Burns or give a 10-10.

So, the rounds to look at are:

Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Round 8 (no debate at all)
Round 9
Round 10

Anyone, go and re-watch these and see if you can find a way not to give them to Beltran.

For me, you can argue against robbery when there are at least enough feasible 'swing rounds'. Even though this fight could, at a push, have had one point in it, I also think that there are no 'swing rounds' left to give to Burns. You can't just say 'oh it was close, so let's magic Burns a round out of nowhere'

You can't call people who disagree with the drawn card trolls as that is going to be a lot of people on this board. Beltran should have won a comfortable UD last night, the fact two judges saw it so wrong is crazy. I had it 116-111, Beltran was bossing Burns around the ring for large parts of the fight, and while Burns was throwing lots of punches they where long hooks that left him wide open and be got caught time and time again.

Ridiculous decision.

hampo171 wrote:You can't call people who disagree with the drawn card trolls

That's not at all what i said. I said the people who say Burns only won one or two rounds are trolling.

I also said i had Beltran three points up, and that it was the wrong decision to not award him the victory.

You also said nobody can have any complaints with the judge who scored it a draw, there can be some very real complaints about that judge.

hampo171 wrote:You also said nobody can have any complaints with the judge who scored it a draw, there can be some very real complaints about that judge.

I really don't think so. Perhaps if we're saying all big fights are completely bent and everyone's in on it, but if we're laying off the conspiracy theories for a minute, if lots of people score a fight, say 7-5 in rounds, then a someone judging it a draw isn't all that outrageous. A judge giving it to a figher by three points when he's been knocked down aswell obviously is.

Personally, i don't think British should be judging a fight which involves British or fighters, or the same with American judges and (neutralised) American fighters, etc. I don't know what the argument is for that not happening. In other big sports you wouldn't get, say, a Spanish referee officiating a Spanish national team football match. Perhaps not allowing judges to score their own country's fighters questions their credibility, i don't know, but they don't help themselves.

I saw the tail end of the fight and looked to me like Beltran won as did Sky commentator Jim Watt. I feel the only way to avoid decisions like these (there have been many down the years) is going down the amateur route of scoring by punches landed.

It's obviously easier to influence a person from your own country.

CaledonianCraig wrote:I saw the tail end of the fight and looked to me like Beltran won as did Sky commentator Jim Watt. I feel the only way to avoid decisions like these (there have been many down the years) is going down the amateur route of scoring by punches landed.

They are going away from this in the amateurs. Too easy to corrupt.

Craig that would be a truly horrendous idea, it would create even worse decisions and would make combination punching redundant. The scoring system works as it is but judges should have more leeway to score rounds 10-10 if they're close and 10-8 if it's one sided but with no knockdowns.

The Terror of Tylorstown wrote:Craig that would be a truly horrendous idea, it would create even worse decisions and would make combination punching redundant. The scoring system works as it is but judges should have more leeway to score rounds 10-10 if they're close and 10-8 if it's one sided but with no knockdowns.

Lets remember these boxing federations/councils/associations get lots of money so I am sure they could invest on technology to improve the amateur scoring system and make it quicker so combination punches are scored as well. Leave it in the hands of human judges and you are always going to be left open to corruption or incompetence.

Boxing isn't about just landing the most punches, that doesn't take into account who's controlling the fight, who's being effective with their aggression, who's landing the harder, cleaner shots and who's being defensively sound. It's too simplistic to say fighter A landed more punches so he wins, we'd end up with far more dodgy decisions for instance Trout outlanded Alvarez but he was falling short with the majority of his punches. The system works as it is there but judges need to be able to give more 10-8 and 10-10 rounds.

Sorry but the system does not work as it is as last night showed and the Amhir Khan fight a few years ago that was taken to court and it will happen again. In this day and age I am positive technology could be used (chips in gloves) to assess punches landed and upscoring on harder the punch landed. I am sure it could be done.

CaledonianCraig wrote:Sorry but the system does not work as it is as last night showed and the Amhir Khan fight a few years ago that was taken to court and it will happen again. In this day and age I am positive technology could be used (chips in gloves) to assess punches landed and upscoring on harder the punch landed. I am sure it could be done.

Going to put receptor chips in both fighters arms that they use to block punches with as well?

and an electric richter scale cup for low blows

Izzi wrote:

CaledonianCraig wrote:Sorry but the system does not work as it is as last night showed and the Amhir Khan fight a few years ago that was taken to court and it will happen again. In this day and age I am positive technology could be used (chips in gloves) to assess punches landed and upscoring on harder the punch landed. I am sure it could be done.

Going to put receptor chips in both fighters arms that they use to block punches with as well?

There are ways around it. We are living in an age of technological marvels.

CaledonianCraig wrote:

Izzi wrote:

CaledonianCraig wrote:Sorry but the system does not work as it is as last night showed and the Amhir Khan fight a few years ago that was taken to court and it will happen again. In this day and age I am positive technology could be used (chips in gloves) to assess punches landed and upscoring on harder the punch landed. I am sure it could be done.

Going to put receptor chips in both fighters arms that they use to block punches with as well?

There are ways around it. We are living in an age of technological marvels.

Not sure putting anything in someone's gloves is a good idea. Unless you're Margarito of course.

Judges mostly get it right (out of the hundreds, thousands of fights etc). Saying that I'd be calling for heads to roll if I'd had a bet.

The faster that you start putting technology into play, the faster that people will find ingenious ways to circumvent it and, to put it bluntly, cheat the system.

The mind goes back to Boris Onischenko, the Soviet modern pentathlete, who rigged his sword at the Olympics of 1976 to register hits in fencing when he hadn't actually touched his opponent. He was caught because he went about it in a hilariously amateurish fashion, but it isn't difficult to imagine a much more sophisticated form of chicanery in today's boxing world successfully gerrymandering the result in favour of the wrong fighter. And let's suppose the electronics go on the blink halfway through the sixth round, in any case. Does the action come to a halt while an IT geek is called up to fix things?

A panel of professional judges, trained specifically for the task and reviewed annually for performance by an appropriate person or people, is the only answer I can think of at the moment. I honestly don't think that corruption is the problem as often as sheer incompetence and we need to inject some proper expertise into the entire process of scoring fights.

Another current thread on this board debates the merits of the appeal of Geale's camp against the points loss to Barker. That seemed a line-ball decision by contrast with Burns-Beltran, where the Mexican looked to have serious grounds for complaint. You'd hope that Beltran would receive an immediate rematch, or, if Burns' injury is too serious for him to fight for several months, a match for the vacant title, with Ricky getting first dibs at the winner when he returns.

captain carrantuohil wrote:

The mind goes back to Boris Onischenko, the Soviet modern pentathlete, who rigged his sword at the Olympics of 1976 to register hits in fencing when he hadn't actually touched his opponent.

You pulled that one from the vaults.


I know conspiracy theories are often dismissed with good reason but I suggest there are darker elements at play for two reasons.

1. Invariably these types of results favour the home town fighter and/or the champion.

2. One of the judges is often extremely generous in his scoring in favour of the home town fighter/champion.



Remember Roger Tilleman scoring the first Kessler v Froch fight to Kessler 117-111.


The referee last night was also a homer allowing Burns to hold all night with impunity. There are lots of examples of this including Terry O'Conner, who has been known to stop a fight on the drop of a hat, waving the Cleverly v Kovalev fight off at the end of the third and practically carrying Cleverly back to his corner only to let the fight continue into the 4th with Cleverly entering stage left as the drunk man.

Is it straight up corruption? Has someone been paid extra? Are all 3 judges in on the fact that a fix might be required. Logistically I wonder how it all works. There is no doubt that unbelievable cards get handed in. It just surprises me that no one ever gets prosecuted. The pacman v Bradley judges got suspended for life didn't they? It would seem that judging against the cash cow gets a more severe penalty than judging for.
I wonder would the judging have been as safe in warrens hands?,

CaledonianCraig wrote:Sorry but the system does not work as it is as last night showed and the Amhir Khan fight a few years ago that was taken to court and it will happen again. In this day and age I am positive technology could be used (chips in gloves) to assess punches landed and upscoring on harder the punch landed. I am sure it could be done.

The system works the majority of the time and as the last olympics showed the old amateur way of scoring is wrong an awful lot of the time. Basing a whole fight on punches landed changes the whole concept of what boxing is about hit and don't get not hit the opponent more. Technology is not the answer but a review system of bad decisions could work.

jimdig wrote:Is it straight up corruption? Has someone been paid extra? Are all 3 judges in on the fact that a fix might be required. Logistically I wonder how it all works. There is no doubt that unbelievable cards get handed in. It just surprises me that no one ever gets prosecuted. The pacman v Bradley judges got suspended for life didn't they? It would seem that judging against the cash cow gets a more severe penalty than judging for.
I wonder would the judging have been as safe in warrens hands?,

Eddie inherited Warren's M.O. with the WBO.

In most case it probably stops short of hard cash changing hands but the judges can be influenced as was seen in Portuguese football with referees were being furnished with prostitutes in exchange for favourable decisions. Same in Italy from memory.

Whatever the ins and outs of the decision and we know the WBO is the biggest joke out of all the governing bodies and that it believes it has a niche in the UK..

What we can summise is Burns isn't world class and that he is an accident waiting to happen....

Paper champion for me...If the last guy had...had any ambition he'd have taken his belt..now this stiff should have taken it too.........

Beltran shouldn't be too upset fighting from home....must have known he gets screwed..

Big question is...How did Kevin Mitchell lose to this guy ??????????????

Quite a famous case, the Onischenko one, strongy!

There's no real need to tell fighters or their management teams which members of a panel will be judging a fight until a day or two before the contest itself. Obviously, the judges themselves will know, but the idea would be that they, as part of their remit, are to keep shtum. Clearly biased scoring, which WAS endemic in certain contests across boxing, notably places like Japan and Australia, in the 60s and 70s, would be dramatically reduced, I'm sure. Equally, the merely incompetent scorer would be removed by the rigour of the process that should lead to selection for the elite panel in the first place.

If you have an elite panel of judges of, say, 90, drawn from all over the world, you should be able to ensure that you get neutral judges for every fight where two boxers of different nationalities are involved. If you have two American fighters to score, it matters less that you should have American judges doing the scoring, but the principle is the same. No judge would come under suspicion for accepting any form of sweetener from anyone with skin in the game, because their identities would be unknown until it was too late to reach them.

If judges were seen to be above suspicion on corruption charges, it should then be possible to focus on and identify which are the best at what they do.

I looked through Ortiz record and of all the fights i've seen that he's been a judge in he's got it pretty much spot on every time.

While I'm on this riff, and have plenty of wine inside me to add further inspiration, it shouldn't be beyond the four major governing bodies to pool their resources to pay for the salaries of the 90 (say) professional judges, who ideally, would feature plenty of ex-fighters, who would know what they're looking for.

Perhaps $200,000 dollars a year as a stipe for each elite judge, plus expenses - no more than a total $30 million outlay at an absolute maximum to ensure that decisons are as close to fair as we can get. Add in a training school for judges, which shouldn't break the bank either, and you have a sum that is chicken feed when compared with the vast amount in sanctioning fees that each organisation can demand.

captain carrantuohil wrote:While I'm on this riff, and have plenty of wine inside me to add further inspiration, it shouldn't be beyond the four major governing bodies to pool their resources to pay for the salaries of the 90 (say) professional judges, who ideally, would feature plenty of ex-fighters, who would know what they're looking for.

Perhaps $200,000 dollars a year as a stipe for each elite judge, plus expenses - no more than a total $30 million outlay at an absolute maximum to ensure that decisons are as close to fair as we can get. Add in a training school for judges, which shouldn't break the bank either, and you have a sum that is chicken feed when compared with the vast amount in sanctioning fees that each organisation can demand.

Captain you are the eternal optimist.............Referees that get paid good salaries like Steele are..........................

It's not hard to judge a fight.............

Competency isn't the issue..........

monzon wrote:

hampo171 wrote:You can't call people who disagree with the drawn card trolls

That's not at all what i said. I said the people who say Burns only won one or two rounds are trolling.

I also said i had Beltran three points up, and that it was the wrong decision to not award him the victory.

I gave Burns the 1st, 2nd and 12th rounds. He ruined the fight with his holding, was made to look like a complete novice and the power on his shots was embarrassing.

I'm not a troll, in fact if you have ever seen me discuss Burns in the past you would see I am a fan of Burns, I always enjoy watching his fights. But I am also a realist and that was shocking at the weekend.

You have been ranting on about how you agreed with the decision to the point were I keep thinkin im having deja vu. And now you're trying to bait people into arguments by calling anyone who scored the fight by a large distance a troll??? I would say you're the troll, now go back under your bridge there kid.

Burns lost fair and square and i have great sympathy for Beltran, who lots of people in the states that i know think he is a very good fighter who no one wants to fight. I truly hope he gets another shot in the future and gets the chance to look after his family in the way his talent and hardwork deserves.