There are pros and cons to open scoring in boxing, but the cons seem to outweigh the pros in most cases.
Open Scoring in professional boxing is when the judges let the fighters, trainers, boxing crowd, and boxing audience watching on television know which fighter is winning the fight on the official boxing score card after each round. This style of scoring is really killing the sport of boxing from a drama standpoint.
Sure, there are some pros to Open Scoring such as the trainers in the corner of each fighter having the ability to strategizing based on what they hear from the judges after each round; and motivating a fighter to pick up the pace if he is losing, or even giving confidence to the fighter who is on the winning side of open scoring on the judges’ scorecards.
All of those examples of pros for open scoring are really good, but the cons of implementing open scoring in a professional boxing match seriously outweigh those pros by a very wide margin.
Fighter Motivation is a huge reason why open scoring should be taken out of boxing no matter whether the fighter is winning or losing based on the open scoring by the judges. If a fighter is winning the fight; this can either instill confidence in the fighter, however, in the same breath it can work against the winning fighter as the fighter may try and coast after hearing the official scorecards from the judges and end up getting himself into some trouble by switching to lower gears, losing focus, and getting caught with something big from the losing fighter who is desperate to land anything in hopes of turning the fight around in his favor.
The fighter who is on the losing end of the judges’ official scorecard may also react in one of two ways based on Open Scoring. For instance, the losing fighter may try to step it up and try to mount a comeback or if the fighter felt like after a few rounds he was winning the fight; and then find himself on the losing side of the Open Scoring by the judges; he may just give up and try to make it to the end of the fight given that the losing fighter may feel that no matter what he does the judges’ will not see the fight his way.
Open Scoring simply takes away from the excitement of boxing!!
I am sure boxing fans do not want to be told which fighter is officially winning the fight every single round of a fight of after a certain number of rounds in a fight. Unofficial scorecards are okay given that it is simply the opinion of boxing analyst who are calling the fight for the boxing night.
If a fighter is going to get robbed by an official judges’ scorecard; no one wants to know that the fighter is getting robbed by a judge during the middle of a fight; it simply takes away from the excitement of the fight; especially if boxing fans are witnessing a close tough fight with a lot of swing rounds in the fight that does not have a clear-cut winning fighter in the fight. Boxing fans live for the high drama going into the 12th round of a great fight.
Open scoring takes away from surprising decisions; meaning a fighter that the boxing world and boxing experts felt won the fight and the judges’ official scorecard has him losing the fight; case in point, the first fight between Manny “PacMan” Pacquiao and Timothy “Desert Storm” Bradley back in 2013. If open scoring was used in that fight, I am not sure how Manny Pacquiao would have responded given that he was doing everything in the fight to win and then receive the shocking news via intercom that he was losing that fight.
Again, the boxing world does not want to find out that a fighter who was winning the fight is really losing the fight on the official boxing scorecard via open scoring. This can result in boxing fans who are viewing the fight to lose interest in that particular fight and simply stop watching after hearing such a horrible official scorecard.
Conclusion
Open Scoring should not be allowed in boxing!! It will cause boxing to become boring given that the drama of who is winning the fight has already been revealed; especially in one-sided fights where Open Scoring would not even be needed in the first place given that boxing fans can see a fighter clearly losing a fight with their naked eyes.
Boxing fans love drama!! Open Scoring takes away the ability to talk about a bad decision that was made by the judges’; it takes away boxing fans’ ability to express their feelings about how a fight turned out in the end; no matter if the fight was scored by the judges correctly or not; and it robs boxing fans of the high drama going into the championship rounds of a fight that hangs in the balance.
Long story short; Open Scoring is just not good for boxing and should be banned from professional boxing!
If you like this post and others from Potshot Boxing, feel free to subscribe to this boxing website by entering your email address into the floating email form provided on this post! Potshot Boxing – “Boxing news and article bites for all walks of life.”
