What no one is talking about: Scoring on a curve?

Before writing anything else, I want to note that I simply cannot spell the last name of the boxing fan who came up with this topic of discussion solely from hearing it pronounced 'on air.' That is the only reason I am not properly crediting the creative thought behind the topic. I can only apologize and direct everyone to please actually listen to the show.

I am regular listener of Ring Theory on RingTV.com. Every episode has one segment that everyone who follows boxing should listen to, period. It is called 'What no one is talking about.' Since most of us in the blogosphere have a tendency to talk about what everyone is talking about, it bears some attention.

On today's how that was the question of whether Bernard Hopkins is being graded on a curve relative to his age. This breaks down, in my opinion, into three key components. The latter two were discussed on air, the first was not.

I'm starting with what wasn't discussed because I can't believe it wasn't discussed on air. How do you avoid mentioning Bernard's age?

I think the question of age is deeply relevant to a discussion of how good Hopkins really is and where he belongs in boxing history. It's impossible to ignore. Very few prize-fighters have successfully managed to fight on a truly world-class level for as long as Bernard. If we were to judge all fighters successful longevity by Bernard's standards, that would constitute a curve no one could rise to meet. The man is a freak of fitness. Everyone is going to talk about how good he is 'at his age' for the simple reason that no one ever has been this good at his age before. George Foreman comes closest, but Foreman wasn't fighting Jermain Taylor, Antonio Tarver, Winky Wright, Joe Calzaghe, and Kelly Pavlik back to back and then fighting Pascal at 168 a few fights later? How do you avoid talking about his age when he does well?

The second component is whether fans or media score Hopkins' fights on a curve because of his age. Is he given the benefit of the doubt because he is doing what he is doing at his age or are his fights scored the way they are scored solely based on his performance?

This is complicated. I do think there might be a slight curve and I think age may genuinely be a factor because it is the excuse used to justify certain expressed expectations of boxing fans and experts: the expectation that the next guy he fights is somehow going to destroy him. There was a lot of this surrounding the Pavlik fight and nearly as much surrounding the Pascal fight. Both men were widely predicted by many fight fans to knock Hopkins out. In both cases, this most emphatically did not happen and (regardless of how you scored the Pascal fight) were themselves rather impressively physically beaten up by Hopkins. In both cases the predictions were grounded in a belief that Hopkins had finally 'gotten old' and had nothing left against a younger fighter at the top of their game.

When such resoundingly negative expectations are advanced by fans and experts as a whole then defiance of such expectations is bound to affect how such expectation defying performances are viewed. However, I'm not sure that this kind of a 'curve' is not justified. When someone is perceived as being unable to win and they instead take control of the fight and dominated quite a few rounds of same, is this not the kind of performance that is supposed to affect our perceptions?

The final question is whether the perception that Hopkins was jobbed by Pascal also based on a curve related to Hopkins' age rather than his performance alone? I can't speak for anyone but myself. Speaking for myself, I do think that my pre-existing views may have affected my scoring of Hopkins-Pascal. They just don't have anything to do with Hopkins' age.

I think one of the biggest problems of the scoring of fights today is that knockdowns are given too much credence in boxing. I am not saying that knockdowns are inconsiderable. I am simply advancing two theses:

1.) Not all knockdowns are equal.
2.) Unless it leads to tangible results of some other kind, a knockdown is just one more factor in the scoring of a round.

The first thesis is very simple. There is a difference between a flash knockdown where the combination of punching angles and balance causes one fighter to lose their footing and the effect of a genuinely skillful and/or powerful punch or combination of punches. There are also situational differences in knockdowns. In a closely fought round, the knockdown will decide which fighter wins the round and may justify a 10-8 round. In a round where one fighter scores a knockdown early in the round and then dominates thereafter, at least a 10-8 round (and maybe 10-7) is clearly justified. In a round where one fighter is clearly doing better than other and the guy otherwise getting outboxed and or outfought manages to score a knockdown, the knockdown requires us to score the round for the fighter who pulled it off but does not justify anything more than a 10-9 round. I think judges ignore both substantive and situational differences and treat all knockdowns equally, across the board, far too often. This is often evidence of hometown judging, substandard judging, or some combination of the two.

On to thesis two: some fans believe that a knockdown requires a 10-8 round under the ten point must system. It doesn't, it simply requires that the fighter being knocked down loses a point that round. Since no fighter can receive more than ten points, the guy who knock the other guy down has to win the round: one can't declare it even if the guy who was dropped was winning by a huge margin because he didn't have 11 points. He had ten. The rules also require that the winner of a round receive 10 points unless he somehow loses a point, so there can't be a '9-9' even round without a foul or a counter-knockdown.

It's understandable for fans not to fully grasp all of this, inexcusable for judges. Worse, some judges don't confine their mistake to just scoring one round 10-8 instead of 10-9. They mentally carry the knockdown into the next round and filter their perceptions of the current round through the previous round's knockdown.

The best possible examples I can give are the differences between three fights: Wlad Klitschko-Sam Peter and the duo of Adamek-Cunningham and Hopkins-Pascal. All three fights followed similar blueprints and yet were scored very differently.

Klitschko-Peter is my view of how such a fight should be scored. All three of the judges came up with scores of 114-111. I wasn't scoring fights back then. I didn't even have a blog in 2005. I'm pretty sure my score would have been close to the same as theirs, but whether or not I would have given Peter a 10-8 round is a very minor quibble. The right guy won and the score reflected the reality of the fight. One guy completely outboxed the other and the knockdowns were isolated incidents that didn't derail the process at all.

Adamek-Cunngingham was a bit different in a couple of ways. The first was that Adamek when Adamek buckled down and fought he clearly outpunched Cunningham and he had good moments in every round as a result. The second was that, unlike Wlad, Cunningham clearly transitioned his fight-plan due to Adamek's power. Early on he wanted to fight a lot more, but after being dropped the first time he changed tactics and was more of a pure boxer. The thing is that Adamek didn't want to buckle down and punch. He wanted to load up, land a right hand, and watch Cunningham get counted out. He did not appear to have the stamina or skill to hang with Cunningham for every minute of every round. I gave Adamek a total of four rounds: the three in which he scored knockdowns and round nine. Why did I give the other eight rounds to Cunningham? In five of them, Adamek just didn't do anything that justified giving him a round. In the other three (rounds ten, eleven, and twelve) Cunningham changed gears and just outright whupped on Adamek while Adamek stayed in the same gear he'd been in the whole fight. My score was 114-112 for Cunningham. The longer ago the fight gets, the more I think Cunningham was jobbed rather than seeing it as a close fight. Why? Well, to be honest, it wasn't really that close except for the knockdowns. There was only one 'swing round' that could go either way and I gave it to Adamek. The other eight rounds were all Cunningham.

The difference between Adamek-Cunningham and Hopkins-Pascal on my scorecard was one point each way*. I scored the fight 115-111 for Hopkins. Why? Pascal scored one less knockdown. I saw the first round as nearly even and would have a hard time scoring it if not for the knockdown. I thought the second round was just like the first, near even and very slightly Hopkins' round because of very slightly cleaner and more effective punching coupled with better ring-generalship. This is one of the three rounds I made judgment call in what I thought was a close situation. The second was in the third round, where I gave Pascal a two point round for a last moment knockdown in a round I was getting ready to give to Hopkins. I could not decide whether to give Pascal one point or two and I gave him two based on the fact that I had given Hopkins the benefit of the doubt in the previous round. I thought Hopkins won four and five by doing just enough more than Pascal, just a little more successfully.

Despite Pascal's two knockdowns, I only think the fight was 'close' for the first five rounds (at which point I had Pascal up by a point on the strength of the knockdowns) of action. In the sixth round Hopkins landed a punch that changed the fight: he visibly shook Pascal up with a right hand and Pascal's punch output immediately dropped and he started to respect Hopkins too much to successfully open up on him for the rest of the fight. Pascal didn't do enough to salvage his original lead or keep the fight close. I gave him the eighth round because he made a great rally just when I was looking for a round to give to him. When the chips were really down, Hopkins did things to win rounds and Pascal did not.

I've tried to break the latter two fights down to explain my thinking in both rather than to needless re-subject anyone to the original articles.

On a separate note, I think Hopkins was out of line complaining about the referee. The first knockdown was a legitimate punch that landed illegally because Hopkins moved in such a manner that he could only be hit in the back of the head. Most referees will call that a legal blow in most situations: some will go so far as to let a fighter (call him Frank Bruno, Nigel Benn, or Antonio Margarito) get away with repeated or deliberate rabbit punches because of his opponent's defensive posture. Later, when Pascal clearly threw a deliberate rabbit punch the referee correctly waved the knockdown off and allowed the action to continue. I thought Michael Griffin was as good a referee in this fight as anyone could be, certainly no Marlon Wright.

As I said in my original piece on the fight, I thought the American judge scored it close enough to right and that the French-Canadian judge at least had the decency to call it a draw instead of make up an extra point for Pascal someplace. I've seen worse 'hometown judging.' I specifically took issue with Daniel van de Wielle's scoring of the fight because he had no visible reason to be biased and a history of incompetence as both a referee and a judge. The closest I will come to defending him is that I know a lot of European professional judges tend to score points as if they were watching an amateur fight, ignoring body shots, but since I don't agree with that either I don't think it is a real defense.

*My original blog post says 115-110, this is due to a mathematical error I didn't catch the first time around. Going over my 'score card', I see I left a point off Pascal's side of the ledger. It's still a pretty big difference between my card and van de Wiele's.