IBHOF inductee Graham Houston looks back at a weekend where controversial scorecards were at the fore in the UK and America, with judges Terry O’Connor and Julie Lederman both under fire.
Two fights over the weekend raised, once again, the question of judges’ competency.
In the UK, judge Terry O’Connor was criticised for giving Mexico’s Miguel Vazquez only three rounds in his 12-rounder with Lewis Ritson, which was for the stepping stone WBA Inter-Continental 140 pounds title.
Just hours later, in the US, judge Julie Lederman raised eyebrows by giving Vasily Lomachenko only one of the 12 rounds in his lightweight unification title fight with Teofimo Lopez.
As we all know, scoring fights is subjective. That’s why we have so many split decisions. In the old days, newspapers often published a poll of ringside reporters after a big fight ended on a points decision. Writers were invariably divided if it had been a close contest.
What is of concern, though, is when a judge is perceived to turn in too many scores that do not seem to reflect what happened in the bout in question.
However, any judge can have a bad night. It can happen.
For a self-respecting arbiter, to be considered a “bad judge” is just too awful for words. Indeed, I know of world-class judges who were genuinely mortified when their scorecards came in for severe criticism.
Even some years after the fight, a well-known judge in Las Vegas felt the need to explain to me the reason behind a controversial score (personal issues weighing heavily on his mind).
These days, with social media, criticism of a decision can take on the form of vilification.
Judge CJ (Cynthia) Ross, for instance, never judged another fight after the storm of censure that greeted her 114-114 score in the Floyd Mayweather vs Canelo Alvarez bout. It was a contest in which Mayweather clearly outclassed Canelo. As I understand it, Ross simply stepped away from judging.
This brings us to the weekend’s fights.
First, Lopez vs Lomachenko. Julie Lederman was actually the odd judge out in only two rounds. She gave Lopez rounds eight and 10 while the other two judges, Steve Weisfeld and Tim Cheatham, gave those rounds to Lomachenko. It’s just that a 119-109 scorecard wasn’t a true reflection of the fight.
Promoter Bob Arum, who had Lopez winning by 115-113 (as did I) was extremely critical of Lederman’s score, to the point of tweeting that he would advise Top Rank fighters to request the Nevada commission not to appoint Lederman as a judge for their fights.
Lederman “off” cards that come to mind: scoring Sergiy Derevyanchenko the winner over Daniel Jacobs (the other two judges had Jacobs winning by three points) and making Argenis Mendez a 97-93 winner over Juan Heraldez when the other two judges had the bout 95-95.
Yet, to be fair, Lederman has been consistently in the same ballpark as the other two judges in a lot of fights.
On the other side of the Atlantic, O’Connor undeniably had a bad night. O’Connor had Ritson winning by what surely looked a too-wide margin against Vazquez — not to mention the now-infamous “not watching the fight” image of O’Connor that popped up on social media.
Promoter Eddie Hearn found the decision in Ritson’s favour rather shocking, particularly O’Connor’s wide score. Yet, in O’Connor’s defence, the DAZN team of commentator Nick Halling and expert analyst Alex Arthur both had Ritson winning comfortably.
The best Halling could give Vazquez was “a couple of the early rounds”, while Arthur, who of course won major titles as a boxer, made the point that Vazquez came to survive, not to win. And in Ritson’s corner, trainer Neil Fannan was reassuring the British boxer all night that he was winning. There was no concern whatsoever on Fannan’s part.
So, Halling, Arthur and Fannan were, basically, all seeing the same fight as O’Connor.
This is where subjectivity comes into it. I had Vazquez winning 116-112. I thought he was doing a good job of jabbing and moving, making Ritson miss, pecking away and picking up points. In fact it somewhat reminded me of a fight at the Royal Albert Hall years ago when Mexican welterweight Raul Soriano messed British champion Ralph Charles around for 10 rounds, the difference being that the visitor got the decision on that occasion.
Ritson certainly landed the harder punches against Vazquez. It was Ritson who was moving forward. Ritson, naturally enough, believes he won. He felt that Vazquez was mostly “tapping and hitting the gloves”. Ritson’s jabs looked weighty, but Vazquez was a busy bee. As Ritson himself said: “It just depends what you like.”
The Sky TV commentators had Vazquez winning comfortably. Still, Vazquez seemed to accept the decision without demur, even applauding when Ritson was announced as the winner.
Of course, maybe Vazquez never expected to get the nod after being strangely scored the loser against Ohara Davies.
We keep hearing about scoring criteria: effective aggression, defence, ring generalship and so on. But nothing wins a round more than hard, clear punches. If an observer felt that one of Ritson’s stiff jabs was worth more than, say, 10 or 12 of Vazquez’s “nuisance” lefts, then the decision and even O’Connor’s scoring begins to make sense.
However, the widely seen image of O’Connor looking away from the ring during one of the rounds in the Ritson-Vazquez fight needs some explaining. O’Connor appeared to be peering down at his cell phone. And I think everyone agrees that a judge should be fully focused on every second of every round. At time of writing, O’Connor was due to appear before the Boxing Board to discuss his performance.
Some form of disciplinary action by the Board might not seem inappropriate in the O’Connor case.
It is rare, though, for judges to have their licences suspended. But it has happened. Judges in New Jersey were suspended after Paul Williams was scored a hotly disputed winner over Erislandy Lara in a meeting of world-class 154-pounders in 2011. The Russian boxing federation suspended two judges for 18 months after Dmitry Kudryashov was given a dubious split decision over the Czech Vaclav Pejsar last December.
Way back in the 1950s in the UK, veteran Leeds referee Ben Greene was in effect suspended by the Boxing Board after scoring Londoner Peter Waterman the winner over former welterweight champion Kid Gavilan. The decision was roundly condemned. I believe Greene was around 70 years old and the Board conveniently introduced a new rule in which referees automatically had to retire when reaching the age of 65 (at that time, referees were the sole arbiter in Britain).
But even in the case of the Waterman vs Gavilan decision, the referee had a defender. Veteran boxing writer Gilbert Odd made Waterman the winner, reasoning that Gavilan did a lot of slapping and that under the Boxing Board’s own rules, points should only be awarded for punches delivered with the knuckle part of the glove. (The Cuban Hawk met Waterman in a rematch in London two months later, and this time the referee had Gavilan winning.)
Having been a judge myself for several years in Canada, and being aware of the pressure, I try not to come down too hard on the arbiters. I can live with a judge apparently misreading a fight as long as it doesn’t happen too often — I’m not talking about the truly inexplicable scorecards, such as Jose Juan Guerra’s 118-110 card in favour of Sugar Ray Leonard over Marvelous Marvin Hagler.
At the end of the day, Lewis Ritson wasn’t so far wrong. When scoring a fight, it often comes down to what we like. It really is that simple.
Main image: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing.