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Attrocious boxing scoring on display in Beijing

By Zach Arnold | August 23, 2008

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I give the folks at Total MMA a lot of credit for liveblogging and covering the multitude of amateur boxing fights at the Beijing Olympics this year. They deserve praise from everyone for doing this.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to even start writing about the ‘amateur boxing’ has been put on display at these Olympic games. As ESPN boxing Joe Tessitore called it yesterday on television, “It’s not boxing. It’s slapfighting.”

If you are a traditional boxing fan, it seems next to impossible to try to keep up with watching the Olympic boxing fights because you have no idea what the scoring is or how it’s done. A classic example of this scenario happened on Friday involving French boxer Alexis Vastine.

Vastine was fighting Dominican boxer Felix Diaz (who went on to win the gold medal in the 64 kg weight class) on Friday and found himself in a bizarre position of losing a fight on a last-minute penalty on the scorecards. On CNBC, one of NBC’s US cable channels, the network showed footage of the fight between Vastine and Diaz in which Diaz was constantly holding Vastine throughout the three rounds. However, the referee in the fight kept issuing warnings to Vastine’s trainer and not to Diaz. The referee then told Vastine’s trainer to leave the ringside area. Diaz continued to hold onto Vastine and never received a point penalty. As the fight went on, Vastine did hold Diaz a couple of times, but it was nowhere close to what Diaz had been doing the entire fight. The referee brazenly started penalizing Vastine when he didn’t give any sort of penalty to Diaz.

To give you an alternative perspective on the controversy regarding the Vastine/Diaz fight, let’s check out what Alan Conceicao of Total MMA had to say about the situation:

The other semifinal saw a very controversial finish. Manuel Diaz had been attempting to charge forward with varying success against French boxer Alexis Vastine and the southpaw/orthodox clash led to a number of clinches. Vastine was warned and Diaz assigned 2 points in the 2nd round, tightening the score up. He kept the lead for most of the bout, but Diaz’s occasional attacks pushed him enough to tire him. Late in the final round, Diaz came up with 2 points to tie the bout at 10 all with approximately 30 seconds remaining. Following one of the many clinches in the fight, the ref then warned Vastine again, handing 2 points, the victory, and the chance at gold to Diaz. Vastine was inconsolable in the aftermath, and there’s been a significant number of questions about consistency to such calls, along with note of the numerous holding and headbutt verbals to Diaz. It can be argued either way, though Vastine was often more responsible for holding than Diaz, nor does the fact that the holding was called correctly when it wasn’t being called in other bouts mean it was a poor call.

The outcome of the Vastine/Diaz fight shocked the usually unflappable Bob Papa and Teddy Atlas, who ripped into Olympic officials and said that the matches on display in the ring were not really boxing-related at all because of the bizarre scoring system and rules system now in place. Jim Gray, doing ringside analysis, also showed no mercy in ripping Terry Smith (AIBA technical representative) and said that Smith was living in a cocoon if he thought that the referee made the right decision in the boxing match.

One of the major points of contention during the amateur fights in the Olympic games revolves around a new scoring system that Teddy Atlas referred to as ‘a video game system.’ Five judges at ringside have punch controls to touch when they think a fighter has scored a point or multiple points. However, in order for a fighter to score a point, three of those five judges must punch the control within one second or else a fighter is not awarded a point. Naturally, this system has led to complete chaos and several fighters who deserved points have not gotten any while some undeserving fighters have been awarded points during fights.

Bob Papa concluded that computerized-scoring of the Olympic boxing matches will never work. We will have a Q & A session with Bob Canobbio of Compustrike & Compubox fame to talk about why the scoring system has been so bizarre during these Olympic games and how a system like Compubox could improve what the current system in place is right now.

Topics: Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

13 Responses to “Attrocious boxing scoring on display in Beijing”

  1. Alan Conceicao says:

    I don’t want to give too much away since I’ll be writing a postscript soon enough re: the boxing at the Olympics, but there’s a couple issues at hand I think that magnify the scoring problems. First, going back to the major tournaments in the last couple of years, there were no issues with the scoring. The Pan-Ams and World Championships were both scored competently using the methodology of amateur boxing, which I should note is markedly different than pro boxing and always has been. The major problem is that the scoring is so far down in the Olympics that it creates the possibility of 2 point swings changing fights (like the Vastine/Diaz bout). Why is it way down? No one seems to have any idea, and so the possibility of fixing comes into play.

    Secondly, the system came into place following the 1988 Olympics where Michael Carbajal and Roy Jones Jr were blatantly robbed. The IOC told the AIBA to change the rules to a computerized system that was completely transparent, otherwise boxing was out of the Olympics. The AIBA then developed the current system for use in all major international and most national competitions. I’ll keep the rest for what I’ve got coming later in the week over at the site though.

  2. Fluyid says:

    You know how sometimes people say that “X” is destroying boxing, “X” being anything from MMA to professional wrestling to anything else?

    Boxing is destroying boxing. This SHIT called boxing in the Olympics disturbs me greatly.

    There is literally NOTHING that could make Olympic boxing worse than it currently is. The skillset that one must cultivate to succeed in Olympic boxing is actually different than in what I’ll call real boxing.

    I could go on and on regarding the technical disaster this system has affected with regard to the quality of boxers it’s producing, but I don’t think anyone disagrees.

    The biggest problem is that this sport is now unwatchable, even among the most hardcore boxing fans and insiders. I have decades in the sport, and when boxing comes on I will turn it to badminton or fencing or I’ll simply turn and watch my dog lick herself. This version of boxing will turn everyone off on boxing.

  3. Fluyid says:

    “The IOC told the AIBA to change the rules to a computerized system that was completely transparent, otherwise boxing was out of the Olympics.”

    I know I’m just a dumb guy on a computer, but taking out subjective criteria like ring generalship and effective aggressiveness (traditional factors for judges to consider) completely changes the sport and, in my opinion, ruins it. As the announcers pointed out, all the IOC really needs now to “score” boxing is a group of teenagers who are really good at video games, so that they can hit the button in a timely manner.

    I don’t like the idea of making the score available during the fight, but I hate it slightly less than I hate the way they score the bouts now.

  4. Jason Bennett says:

    What! A boxing scandal!!

    I can’t help but laugh at the outrage and surprise regarding the current shenanigans around the ‘sport’ of boxing. It has been a farce for many many years and anyone kidding themselves need to do a few simple google searches find out.

    For me, I completely dropped boxing in 1995 after the George Foreman controversies: the WBA stripping him of their title for not fighting mandatory #1 challenger, followed by a horrible decision win over Axel Schultz (one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen) and refusing the mandatory rematch, which stripped his other title away.

    The fix has been in for a very long time and I just couldn’t keep pretending it was legitimate.

  5. b.w. says:

    this is exactly why when dana white was asked aboutt mma being in the olympics and he sadi”i would love to see that before i die” and i though to myself “i wouldnt”. the iocc would make a mockery out of the current mma rules and would change the whole look. i remember that jones fight and havent watched olympic boxing since. why bother? i quit watching them all together since they started letting the nba,and the nhl and other pro atheletes compete. that wasnt for the good of the games, it was all about the money. greed still plays a big part in the olympics. there are alot of smaller countries that will pay their amatuer boxers alot of money to medal in the games and get tons of endorsement money, yet still get to keep their amatuer status. when will it stop. will the start letting pro boxers, mlb, the nfl start competing. HA! what about golf, im sure the iocc would love to have tiger woods compete. lol!

  6. Michaelthebox says:

    The scoring is an embarrassing clusterfuck.

    Early on in the olympics, I actually thought they were scoring by round, because I kept seeing the boxers drill each other and no point was being awarded.

  7. Alan Conceicao says:

    Amateur boxing has never been about nebulous effective punching or ring generalship. People that tell you that are liars or don’t know what they are talking about. As for the system not providing “real boxing”, the majority of pro stars are still guys with significant amateur careers and often Olympic success. There are other reasons why we don’t see many star making performances (a la Michael Spinks). For one, there are no Michael Spinks, or even Leon Spinks in the US amateur system anymore. That sorta happens when you’re the one system not publically subsidizing amateur boxers.

  8. Fluyid says:

    “People that tell you that are liars or don’t know what they are talking about”

    I have to plead NOT GUILTY to both charges.

    I represented the U.S. IN international boxing competitions twice in the 80s I have trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. I was runner-up in the national Junior Olympics one year, and got a bronze in another year. I sort of feel like I have an idea of what I’m talking about.

    I’m definitely not trying to get in any prolonged disagreement with you, but I’ll stand by what I wrote and stand by my opinion that I’m neither uninformed on the topic nor a liar.

  9. Alan Conceicao says:

    I represented the U.S. international boxing competitions twice in the 80s. I have trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. I was runner-up in the national Junior Olympics one year, and got a bronze in another year. I sort of feel like I have an idea of what I’m talking about.

    I’m definitely not trying to get in any prolonged disagreement with you, but I’ll stand by what I wrote and stand by my opinion that I’m neither uninformed on the topic nor a liar.

    So, what part of the 20 point system rewarded effective punching?

  10. Fluyid says:

    I believe I wrote “effective aggressiveness,” which I know for a fact was one of the criterion at one point. You wrote something different than what I wrote, so I apologize for appearing to disagree head-on with that statement.

  11. Alan Conceicao says:

    To kinda make this as broad as I can without giving away too much, the problems with the 20 point system are the same as they are with the 10 point must in pro boxing. You can easily argue that the scoring credits “effective aggression” because it counts punches. The problem, again, is not that punches are being counted, its the fashion in which they are. No one was up in arms in the boxing community after the Pan Ams or World Championships because it was clear that the fights were being scored fairly. When one guy gets RSCOed in the whole Olympics, there is something wrong there.

  12. bk says:

    “Unfortunately, I have no idea how to even start writing about the ‘amateur boxing’ has been put on display at these Olympic games.”

    Yipes.

  13. Dave says:

    For what its worth, just about everything I’ve watched so far; judo, boxing, wrestling, etc., has had bad officiating. But the boxing has probably been the absolute worst.

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