SSA Blog: What's the score?

Boxing, like many sports, has its fair share of controversy. The subjective nature of the scoring system has left many worried about the ease with which scoring could be manipulated. These worries were born out in a report by Professor Richard McLaren, looking at corruption at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. He found that a handpicked team of senior “five-star” referees and judges used signals at ringside or instructed colleagues on the morning of fights as to who should win.

McLaren also said that controversial defeats at the Rio Games for Great Britain’s Joe Joyce in the super-heavyweight final against France’s Tony Yoka and Ireland’s Michael Conlan in his bantamweight quarter-final against the Russian Vladimir Nikitin were among around 11 fights under investigation.

Despite no suggestions of corruption, the recent WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO light-welterweight title fight between champion Josh Taylor and Jack Catterall sparked enough contention that the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC) ordered an investigation.  

Champion Taylor held onto his belts despite many both ringside and watching on television being convinced that Catterall had done enough to win. When the scorecards were returned, one judge called the fight for Catterall by a point, another for Taylor by a point. The third judge had Taylor winning by 3 points. A huge margin considering Taylor had been floored in the eighth round.

At the end of last week, the BBBC acted. The judge in question was downgraded. Interestingly the BBBC didn’t question the result, just the margin of victory. This brings into sharp focus the difficulty in scoring and the subjectivity of the system by which judges are expected to base their views.   

Boxing is scored on a round by round basis using the '10-Point Must System’. If a boxer is knocked down or receives a standing count from the referee, they lose a point. If a fighter controls a round by landing shots and knocks their opponent down, the result would be 10-8. However If a boxer dominates the round but gets caught out and put on the canvas for a knockdown, it's a 9-9 round. Other variations of this theme exist, so a fighter might not have to be knocked down or receive a count to lose a round 10-8, but in general terms, that is how the scoring works. Points can also be deducted by the referee for foul play at any time.

 Surprisingly, factors such as punches landed don't have a direct effect on the scoring. Instead, judges are told to score a fight on the following criteria

• Effective Aggression: Where the aggressor consistently lands punches and avoids those from his opponent.

• Ring Generalship: The fighter who controls the action and enforces their will and style.

• Defence: How well is a boxer slipping, parrying, and blocking punches

• Hard and Clean Punches: Hard shots that land clean.

The subjectivity in this system has prompted calls for a technological solution. The hope is that technology can provide enhanced objectivity and transparency. But how would this be achieved? Glove technology has been discussed for many years. Embedding sensors within a fighter’s wraps to track punches and forces sounds like a logical step. It does, however, present a few issues. Distinguishing scoring shots, rather than those that have been blocked or taken on the arm for example remains an open debate. But perhaps the biggest issue with glove technology is that it fails to give an indication of the condition of the opponent i.e really registering the impact punches are having. 

This is where mouthguard and impact classification technology has begun to gain some traction. Mouthguard technology is currently being used across contact sports to help measure, manage and mitigate concussions and head impacts. The question is if this technology can measure impacts in sports such as rugby or American football, why not boxing? 

One Australian firm, HITIQ, a client of Sport Science Agency, has developed advanced mouthguard and impact detection technology. Its focus has been contact sports, but the theoretical leap from impact detection on the pitch to the ring isn’t difficult to foresee.

The current HITIQ system is able to measure and record impact forces that occur not just to the head but across the whole body. So, if a particularly hard tackle in rugby occurs at waist height, the system recognises it. In boxing, the relatively small target areas of the head and upper body would make impact classification achievable. This could then be built into either a new scoring system or combined with existing scoring metrics. 

Impact classification is the key to bringing boxing into the digital age. With enhanced connectivity, a classification system could deliver a single impact number at the end of each round, an accumulated number as the rounds progress and a total impact figure at the end of the fight. 

Of course, impact measurements work in terms of defence as well as offence. If a fighter is particularly skilled at avoiding punches, their impact score would remain low. Questions will rightly be raised as to the accuracy of such a system. If it is to measure just impacts, could hard but glove taken shots accumulate to artificially inflate an impact score? At the moment a judge-led system would have to work in combination with an impact classifier to overcome this issue. However, in the future a multi-camera AI system could be the answer, with the platform for such a system on the horizon.

As with any technology that has been introduced to support the officiating team, they would have to have some oversight. Cricket’s DRS system is always used as an example of how technology has helped move subjective decision making forward. Boxing is a different beast. Assessments as to the impact of punches need to be recorded and classified before being fed back to judges in order to effectively support the scoring of a bout.

The result of the recent Josh Taylor and Jack Catterall fight has sparked debate once again about boxing’s scoring system. Technology has been successfully implemented across a host of sports to aid and assist referees, judges and umpires. Boxing hasn’t found a system to help it move to a more objective scoring system and support its judges. If it does come, it feels like a mouthguard based system will be at its heart with impact detection and classification at its heart.  

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