It only takes one judge having a bad night to wreck a legacy – we need a process to overturn results
The outrage has been loud and long after the ridiculous judging on Saturday night which deprived Jack Catterall of his world title dream, legacy and enhanced livelihood after coming out on the wrong side of a decision loss to Josh Taylor.
It was one of the worst judging outcomes I’ve ever seen in 30 years of covering boxing. I thought Catterall won by two rounds. That said, and this sounds anomalous, it was nonetheless a close, scrappy fight.
Peculiarly, all three judges agreed on 10 of the 12 rounds, but Ian John-Lewis scored it 114-111 for Taylor and Victor Loughlin 113-112 for the defending champion, while Howard Foster awarded the bout 113-112 for Catterall. Had Loughlin scored the 12th round for Catterall and not Taylor, the split decision would have gone to the challenger, and we would not be having the debate. Where all three judges made the fight closer was in giving rounds two and three to Taylor. But that does not excuse the poor judging, or the vagaries and complexities of the 10-point must system, used in boxing.
Overarching all of this should be justice for Catterall. The young father from Chorley should now be speaking as the undisputed super lightweight champion of the world, in demand, and looking forward to lucrative titles defences, new sponsors, and a swathe of financial and sporting reward from his success. He was undefeated going into the contest with Taylor after waiting two years for his opportunity to challenge for the title. The British Boxing Board of Control [BBBoC] have reported the fight to the World Boxing Organisation – Catterall was the mandatory challenger to their title, with all the other belts also on the line – and the judges will report to them on how and why they scored the fight as they did. It will change little, I suspect.
The judges will simply state that it is how they saw the contest as it unfolded. Their honest views on how it went down, in real time. But perhaps it is time for the BBBoC to bring in new judges, create a ranking ladder for judging, and even suspend judges who are performing poorly. Poor judging is what has led to Taylor edging a split-decision victory – the 114-111 scoring of John-Lewis does require scrutiny.
Judging a fight is a subjective process. In some ways the system itself – the 10-point must system – mitigates against the result in close or debatable fights where judges are scoring on either aggression or defensiveness, power and accuracy of punches or volume.
The art of boxing is to hit and not be hit, and within these margins there are many grey areas. But the dangers of highly disputed scores is that the public will turn away, and we are seeing those feelings from large swathes of fans after Saturday night. Many boxers and trainers have also expressed similar views about what has transpired.
So what is to be done? Boxing has a subjective scoring system. That will never change. It will always be subjective, and based on three judges’ opinions. There are lots of alternatives being put forward and in my opinion, it will not make the judging any more accurate. Three sets of two judges and their agreements round by round may simply add to the complexity. There have even been calls for the scoring system to be made broader, with additional half point scores for rounds to be introduced, or even five judges. Senior officials in the sport believe these alternatives may create greater complications.
But what should happen, nonetheless, is that there should be an appeals system in place to overturn a decision, retrospectively, that overrides judges’ simply giving their verdict on who won each round. Setting up an independent panel to oversee this would be extremely complex given the set up in boxing. The Court of Arbitration in Sport could do little to change it, either, at present, as the defence of the judges is that they were simply giving their opinion on who won a round of boxing. There is certainly no suggestion here that there is any hint of corruption involved, but the old adage of having to take the belt from the champion does apply. If anything, Catterall did exactly that in Glasgow on Saturday night, in the face of fierce home support for the defending champion.
Five years ago, incompetent scoring in the Gennady Golovkin-Saul Alvarez fight in Las Vegas, which ended in a draw after the three judges returned wildly different results, caused global outrage. In a fight in which Golovkin clearly won seven or eight of the rounds against Canelo, judge Adelaide Byrd scored it 118-110 to the Mexican Canelo. She had scored 10 of the 12 rounds to Canelo, and she was removed from the judging roster for a period by the Nevada Commission.
Boxing is being hamstrung by poor judging and indeed, a longstanding, limited scoring system – which is always open to failure in unclear or close bouts, or simply those featuring contrasting styles of fighters. Such scoring can leave the entire sport of boxing exposed.
Perhaps it is time for those in charge to listen, to attempt to modernise, and broaden judging options with personnel and criteria. It is also time for Catterall to be able to appeal the decision, and have it turned over by a neutral panel. It is also time for judges who return poor scores to be suspended, or dropped. They continue on to the next event this weekend. But Catterall is left picking up the pieces, mentally and emotionally, of the shattered dream he has spent almost 20 years building.