Get better judging, or ditch boxing from Olympics
Posted: Sunday, August 17, 2008 10:46 PM
BEIJING – Either amateur boxing finds a way to fairly judge fights, or the International Olympic Committee has to dump the sport.
I’m not saying this because a couple of Americans – most recently Demetrius Andrade – are whining about being hosed by the officials at the Workers Gymnasium. I’m saying it because the judging stinks.
There is near-universal agreement on that. Eastern Europeans, Great Britain and Cuba are among those who have joined the Americans in saying the judges are incompetent, biased, on the take or all of the above. If Cuba agrees with the United States, you know it’s serious.
The only country not complaining is China. The country is new to Olympic boxing and its fighters are inexperienced and without shining credentials. But, somehow, they’re winning an awful lot of fights, often for no discernible reason.
In 1988, Roy Jones Jr. was robbed in Korea by judges who handed the gold medal to a Korean. The decision was so bad that the International Amateur Boxing Association instituted electronic scoring for future championships, including the Olympics.
The system employs five ringside judges, each of whom has two buttons in front of him, one red and the other blue. The colors correspond to those worn by the boxers. When a judge sees a fighter land a clean punch, he has to push the appropriate button immediately. If three judges hit their buttons within one second of each other, the punch counts and the fighter gets a point.
The boxing association says it has the best judges in the world here. Watching them operate, you quickly get the feeling that’s like bragging that your kitchen is infested with the world’s biggest cockroaches.
The judges do tend to be old, and their reflexes aren’t what they used to be. Under pressure to hit those buttons instantly, it’s not even certain they always push the one they intended to. Punches that everybody in the arena sees aren’t counted. Punches that no one sees – sometimes punches that didn’t even seem to be thrown – show up as points.
Most absurd is that fighters have knocked down opponents without getting credit for landing a punch. This being amateur fighting, boxers get no extra credit for knockdowns.
Corruption is endemic to boxing. It’s been there from the beginning and refuses to go away. There are reasons for that. Boxers generally come from the lowest socio-economic groups, and are desperate to get out. The judges that come from a lot of countries aren’t independently wealthy and they get their jobs by pleasing the people handing out the meager paychecks. So they had better please the folks with the money or they’re not getting any.
They’ve never been averse to seeing a little extra in their pay envelope for favors rendered. They’re also quite happy to accept whatever gifts are showered on them by the hosts.
The electronic scoring is just as susceptible to manipulation as the old-fashioned scoring on paper was. If a judge wants the blue corner to win, he simply neglects to push the button for the red corner. Get three out of the five judges on your side, and you’ve got the fight.
The only way to combat the impression that the fix is in for certain fighters is to get judges who call it the way everybody else but them sees it. One suggestion I’ve seen makes a lot of sense: have three judges registering punches for the red corner and three for the blue. That way they can concentrate on just one fighter. Also, score extra points for knockdowns.
My own desire would be that independent judges be assigned by the IOC to the Olympics. They don’t have to know anything about boxing, and they shouldn’t be associated with the sport in any professional capacity. Get six young men and women, assign three to red and three to blue, tell them to hit the buttons when they see a clean punch land, and you’ll get better judging than what these guys are giving us. You’ll also get a little honesty.
Most of all, you’ll save the sport in the Olympics. Because if it keeps going as it has for the past 20 years, there’s no sense in keeping the sport. The Olympics are about the best against the best in fair competition. It’s time for boxing to either buy into that ideal or get out of Dodge.
