how do you score fights?

Over the years we have had such a mix of thoughts over fights with regards fights. How many times do fans watch fights only to here the score cards and wonder 'how the hell did he score the fight like that'?!

So how do you score rounds. Do you place more emphasis on aggression like lots of judges do in certain countries. Is it all about technique? Do you feel a challenger has to do something a bit special to take a title? Do you sometimes feel that you have been a bit biased to your favoured fighter?

Personally I think I'm at times a sucker for a bit of added aggression if a fight is tight. Even though in hindsight some of that aggression has been wasted effort. Plus my appreciation of the finer arts of boxing ain't as impressive as some on these boards. Once in a while just like the real judges you have to accept youmaybe read it wrong on the night

Is difficult, have a bit of a bee in my bonnet at the minute with the whole aggression thing, as my understanding is scoring guidelines state points should be scored for effective aggression. Think all too often the word effective gets overlooked and people almost believe just plodding forward, being on the front foot or throwing more are enough. A classic example is Hatton's recent fight where after the fourth he was certainly coming forward but was eating jabs pretty much non stop. No kudos on the cards should have been given for that as far as I am concerned.

Personally try not to favour a champion because don't care for all that you have to take it from a champion lark, if you win the round you win it, irrespective of who has the belt at the start of a fight. Personally when I am scoring a fight lean towards who landed the most clean punches in a round and who seems to be executing their game plan the better, which I know sounds a bit vague but I would suspect most of us do similar.

As Jeff says, effective aggression is one of the keys, once you've got past landing cleanly. There is also the even more nebulous ring generalship concept - essentially, who controlled the centre of the ring, or if it was willingly ceded, made his opponent not have the faintest idea what to do with it?

If clean shots to head and body are more or less equal, advantage ought really to go to the person who is less inconvenienced during a round.

Thanks Jeff and captain.

How about commentary? Do you ever find it effecting your scoring. Hardly a fight goes by without someone saying on here that they have watched a fight from two broadcasts to find they scored it differently each time

If you're trying to score a fight, commentary is death, I think. A lot of the so called expert summarisers are startlingly bad at scoring a fight, particularly in the UK when a British fighter is fighting a foreign opponent.

Harold Lederman is the worst for that, the strangest thing i've seen him do was give Chavez the first round against Mayweather despite landing next to nothing.

damage done, how effective the aggression was and how clean the shots are that are landing, I think I'm ok with commmentators as I tne dto disagree quite strongly with nearly everything they always say. Except HBO they're generally ok and a fair bit with Lederman, sometimes I wonder what he's doing giving rounds to people who are literally walkign forward barely landing anything.

Mine is a simple formula...Who's been most EFFECTIVE in that round...

Have to pin you down there Truss...what does effective mean exactly in this context? If it's hard to split them on statistical punches landed, what will most sway you in one direction or the other?

A general feel mon Capitan.......or failing that 10-10.

and I've not had a general feel for a good while..

captain carrantuohil wrote:I think. A lot of the so called expert summarisers are startlingly bad at scoring a fight, particularly in the UK when a British fighter is fighting a foreign opponent.

Can't for the life of me think who you could be referring to Captain.

He who might have been the greatest super-middleweight of all, or some such, Jeff. Although he's not the only one with the habit of entering a 10 under the Brit's name before the round has started.

In fairness while we have had some clowns commentating... we do tend to be less biased than our Brit counterparts....

Gil Clancy and Tim Ryan were excellent and in the main objective..

Watt's habit of saying "The good news is etc".......irritates me..

"Get in there Frank"........ takes the prize though..

"How can you take a man's titles away like that?" runs it pretty close, in my opinion...

I genuinely don't mind Jim Watt, can be like a dog with a bone once he gets an idea in his head but generally I don't find myself bothered with him. Think Woodhall is terrible though once a brit is involved, his commentary on the Hatton fight recently was terrible, even TSMR was slagging off his scoring of the fight.

"He's done him Jim"....was another unfortunate offering.....

I agree about Mr PC Woodhall......."The I'm British and proud act now give me some work"....is wearing a tad thin!!

Call me sentimental but I let Watt off purely for the Arguello fight, not many brits have shown such courage in a fight before or after. It's those like Lederman who haven't stepped inside the ring who irritate me most.

I like Foreman but that doesn't stop him being crud with a microphone Ghosty!!

Certainly If I was in the Army I wouldn't want Woodhall as the regimental leader........

"There are 10 guys with machine guns over there....It'll only take us five a minute to run over there and disarm them...We e are British remember"..

I think I'd surrender or go awol!!

Wonder what Herman Jaggery thinks??

About what Truss?


What's the question?

About scoring a fight....

You mean you actually want my opinion? You sincerely want my opinion?

Why not ...people take Dave669 seriously on here...

I'm interested..

You don't take me seriously, Truss?

Nobody does but you're in good company with Gordy.

You got me in the same company as Gordy, Ghost?


As high as that, I'm flattered.

The thing with effective aggression though it can sometimes be a case with neither fighter being particularly effective but one guy is trying to force the action while the other isnt. In these instances I dont have too much issue with the guy who is pressing the fight nicking it, even if he snt landing much or is missing alot. If someone is on the backfoot hardly throwing anything then hes not showing any effective aggression either.

I tend to watch fights with the commentary muted, first off. If it's a fight that I'm intending to do a scorecard for, anyway.

My pet peeves when it comes to scoring are fighters thinking they can nick rounds with late, inconsequential flurries after being outworked / outboxed for the previous two and a half minutes (even more so when judges fall for it!) and fighters who get mixed up between defence and simply not engaging their opponent at all. I'll reward good defensive work ala Mayweather, using movement while still within scoring range, bending the knees and rolling the head with or under shots, being close enough to counter once they make their man miss etc. Not what Mr Dirrell thought he deserved credit for against Froch e.g, bending straight over at the waist and ducking below the opponent's waist themselves, turning the back (all illegal moves) or making them miss only by virtue of being at the other end of the ring and totally out of the scoring zone.

One is defence, the other is simply not fighting.

Those peeves aside, I try to focus on clean scoring shots and who is doing more of what they want to do out of the pair. I also place big emphasis on the jab, as it's the source of most attacks if used correctly and is the most reliable point scorer.

As they say, it's hit and don't get hit. Centre of the ring, outside foot (for the lefty versus righty fights) etc are secondary to me in comparison.

I score fights pretty much exactly how Max Kellerman described it in one of the episodes of 'The Fight Game With Jim Lampley'. As the round progresses I make mental notes of who is winning the fight at various stages and then try to judge if the losing fighter is doing enough to overturn the score deficit in the round.

I always look at the following four criteria:

1. Clean Punching - Who is landing the best shots.
2. Volume - How many punches they are landing.
3. Defence - Who is able to make their opponent miss the target more often (whether it be slipping, rolling or blocking).
4. Ring Generalship - *VERY IMPORTANT* Best way to describe this is who is able to execute their game plan and who is controlling the action. You may have an aggressive fighter who throws a lot, but if the defensive fighter is clearly picking them off, then the defensive fighter is the ring general.

I also tend to be favorable to one fighter hurting another fighter or landing a particularly clean shot (The best shot of that round), which tends to swing my decision in close fights.

I've got to say that ring generalship is something I don't agree with as a way of scoring a fight. Scoring a round on what you perceive someones game plan to be and not what is actually happening just isn't right. I remember people having Hatton vs Floyd pretty close after 6 rounds because Hatton was making it "his kind of fight", completely missing the point that Floyd was beating him up at his kind of fight. For me it is clean punches landed and the damage they do as the main scoring factors. Defence shouldn't be scored as such but used to stop an opponent from scoring, you have to throw punches to win the round.

My system is simple......If a guy is being slapped around I tend to score the round for the other guy...

Surprised it hasn't caught on..

I prioritise the amount of meaningful punches landed. Basically I'd do a sort of ad hoc mental sum in my head by assigning more value to clean or hurtful punches and balance that against volume/amount.

In that sense I emphasise the offensive elements of the game. I think defense and ring generalship are less important. I'd use these elements to separate very close rounds in terms the above criteria. But, for the most part, if you are making the opponent miss/blocking all their shots (defense) or are making them fight your fight (generalship) then it is likely that you will be out-punching them and therefore winning on the above criteria (an example of this would be Haye vs Valuev - although that was mighty close, he made Valuev chase him, miss him, then he mostly landed the best number of meaningful shots)...........this is unless you don't manage to attack from a dominant defensive position then I would likely give the round to the aggressor, who would probably have landed at least some blocked shots, etc (which for me is why Valuev won a number of rounds vs Haye i.e. because at times Haye was being elusive but offering nothing in terms of offense whereas Valuev was pressuring and landing the odd blocked shot.

For me, effective is the key. Does a fighter land? Do they land a lot? Did the punches impact/damage the other fighter?

BoxingFan88 wrote:
4. Ring Generalship - *VERY IMPORTANT* Best way to describe this is who is able to execute their game plan and who is controlling the action. You may have an aggressive fighter who throws a lot, but if the defensive fighter is clearly picking them off, then the defensive fighter is the ring general

Then this prioritises punches landed rather than generalship as such. For me ring generalship is secondary to amount/effectiveness of punches landed. The two usually go hand in hand anyway, but if I was making someone 'fight my fight' i.e. had them, say, on the back foot, but I couldn't land anything and they popped me with a few jabs/counters then I'd expect the other guy to have won the round. It wouldn't be as if he was 'fighting his fight' as such - it would just be that he outlanded me/had the better quality output.

Cheers gents I've enjoyed reading your responses. How about the 10-10 score as mentioned by truss. Do you ever give it? I do when scoring but I know a fair few on here are against it

I rarely give it due to the fact that judges have to have had some form of fit to give one, I've more or less stopped scoring 10-10 rounds as you can generally find a winner.

Scoring a fight is basic and simple. The main thing to ask yourself is: who controlled the round? Take each round as a separate entity and ask yourself: Who got the better of it? Then start afresh in the next.

Counting punches, focussing on aggression etc. is only likely to confuse. Personal preference ("I like aggression", for instance) shouldn't come into it.

There are too many unqualified judges in the sport (and that goes double for the armchair brigade).

I'm not above scoring rounds 10-10, Spencer. They don't crop up all that often, but sometimes there are rounds - particularly very early in a fight - where neither man does quite enough to remove any doubt about whose round it was. I don't understand this point blank refusal that some have to gives rounds as even, to be honest.

The even round dilemma, Chris, is a pendulum that has swung one way and then the other in recent years. In the last boxing Golden Age, broadly the 70s to the mid-80s, I lost count of the number of fights that were marred by bizarre scoring, often from European judges, where as many as two-thirds of rounds were being scored even. Duran-Leonard I is but the most egregious example of this tendency. I'm sure that some European title fights ended up being scored 148-147 and 119-117, which takes fence-sitting to ridiculous lengths.

Fast forward 25-30 years, and we now see an almost mulish reluctance to score any round even, with the result that a highly dominant round is often scored precisely the same as one in which any measure of control that has been established by a fighter is tiny.

I actually prefer the second situation to the one that used to be the norm, but it still isn't ideal. A drawn round should be a weapon in a judge's armoury, not of last resort, but to be used sparingly and judiciously. Certainly the exception, rather than the rule.

88Chris05 wrote:I'm not above scoring rounds 10-10, Spencer. They don't crop up all that often, but sometimes there are rounds - particularly very early in a fight - where neither man does quite enough to remove any doubt about whose round it was. I don't understand this point blank refusal that some have to gives rounds as even, to be honest.

I'm never sure about this either. 10-10 rounds are supposedly discouraged now, but it seems a shame that a clear 10-9 will hold the same value as a really close 10-9 in which you just came down on one side because you had to.

If you really have to think about who won the round, then 10-10 is probably appropriate.

Possibly there should be three categories: (Theoretically there are but they are used so sparingly as to almost matter):

Even Round 10-10
Close won round 10-9
Decisive won round 10-8

I think if these were used with regularity you would see an improvement. However innevetibely the debate would center around the subjective margin of what counts as a close won round and what counts as a decisively won round.

Its not ideal either that a fighter can batter a guy around the ring and win the round clearly and only get a 10-9, whereas he could control a round and suffer an innocuous flash knock down and lose it 10-8.

Maybe you should have to award the round to somebody??

As Haz has touched upon it, I'll agree that judges allowing personal preference of styles cloud their judgement gets right on my wick.

Of today's pundits, I think McGuigan is a bad'un for this. I remember seeing him give his view on the Chavez-Whitaker fight; totally at odds with just about everyone else, he was arguing that a draw wasn't really a bad decision, seemingly based wholely on the fact that it was Chavez moving forward. The crazy thing is, he acknowledged that Whitaker was landing virtually all of the clean, effective shots while Chavez, despite throwing what he described as "a great variety of punches", wasn't getting through with anything at all for the most part - but then added the bizarre caveat that Whitaker "was moving back", as if that somehow adds points to Chavez's score (he did have Whitaker one single point up, but you get my drift).

He also said that Haye got "a lucky decision" against Valuev and, if my memory serves me correctly, he had Trinidad three points up against De la Hoya at the end of the fight, somehow. I really can't see how he'd come to these scores unless he was basically deciding that whoever is marching forward automatically gets rounds, regardless of who is scoring with clean and effective work, initiating exchanges (you don't need to be going forwards to do this), producing the better defensive work etc.

I guess it must be rooted in the style he had as a fighter, but it annoys the bejesus out of me.

Does anybody, like me, never score a fight?

I used to, a long time ago, but quickly realised that it just got in the way of my enjoyment of the action. I just like to sit and watch it, rather than make mental or physical notes on who is controlling the ring, showing effective aggression (whatever that is) or landing the better shots. Perhaps rather naively, I am happy that most judges are capable of doing a good enough job, and a better job than me so I leave them to it.

I have an idea who I think has won, but it is purely a 'feeling' rather than any calculation of who has the most points. Generally I think I am somewhere in line with the result most of the time.

The Macklin v Sturm fight always sticks in my mind. Having watched it, my immediate reaction was that Sturm had nicked it, but then the general consensus on here the following day was that it was daylight robbery, with most peoples scorecards in favor of Macklin by a few points.

With regards to Macklin-Sturm, Tino, I think Mr. Woodhall created about thirty separate accounts for the next day, which may have clouded judgement somewhat (Macklin getting a two point start on the basis that he was born in Birmingham)! Also, there was Towzer, who was usually only one step away from threatening to beat us all up if we disagreed that the fight was anything less than a total highway job....

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:Does anybody, like me, never score a fight?

I used to, a long time ago, but quickly realised that it just got in the way of my enjoyment of the action. I just like to sit and watch it, rather than make mental or physical notes on who is controlling the ring, showing effective aggression (whatever that is) or landing the better shots. Perhaps rather naively, I am happy that most judges are capable of doing a good enough job, and a better job than me so I leave them to it.

I have an idea who I think has won, but it is purely a 'feeling' rather than any calculation of who has the most points. Generally I think I am somewhere in line with the result most of the time.

The Macklin v Sturm fight always sticks in my mind. Having watched it, my immediate reaction was that Sturm had nicked it, but then the general consensus on here the following day was that it was daylight robbery, with most peoples scorecards in favor of Macklin by a few points.

Yeah I actually agree, there are plenty of times I don't score fights, but certain fights, I feel that urge to do it, call me sad... I am.

Don't always score a fight by any means, Tino - need to be having a pipe and slippers moment to do so, these days! Will do if I think that a fight is a) likely to go to the cards, b) I'm on my own with a nice bottle of wine. Like the different discipline of watching a fight not just from a fan's angle.

88Chris05 wrote:With regards to Macklin-Sturm, Tino, I think Mr. Woodhall created about thirty separate accounts for the next day, which may have clouded judgement somewhat (Macklin getting a two point start on the basis that he was born in Birmingham)! Also, there was Towzer, who was usually only one step away from threatening to beat us all up if we disagreed that the fight was anything less than a total highway job....

Aye Chris, Y.Towzer did actually threaten me once by asking me to meet him for a fight. I didn't take him up on his offer, charming as it was.

I remember after that fight, people whose opinion on here is generally well respected had it for both fighters. From memory, you and Windy both scored it for Macklin, whereas I think the Captain had it narrowly for Sturm. I never quite got the uproar that followed it, and still don't understand it now.

Alex; it's not sad, old pal. Each to their own. It just doesn't work for me.

I did indeed have it narrowly for Sturm, Tino, as I did when I watched the fight a second time some while later. Very little in it, and as with all close fights, one is perfectly happy with a narrow decision either way, or even a draw. What has to be eliminated is the rogue judge, the one who scores a fight 118-110 when his two colleagues and everyone else hve it 114-113 or something similar. Such scoring is either incompetent or corrupt and in either case, we're better off without it.