Boxing gets black eye during a special night
Floyd Mayweather Jr. was one round on a scorecard away from being robbed, and thus, give boxing another black eye during what should have been one of its finest hours.
Mayweather managed to retained his unofficial title of the world's best fighter pound-for-pound Saturday with a split decision victory over the "Golden Boy" Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday night.
Problem was, the fight wasn't that close - no matter what the crowd or Mayweather Sr. thought of the decision. Had the younger Mayweather walked out of MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas with anything other than a title belt, there might have been enough call for reform in a sport that so badly needs it.
So, even though Mayweather won, boxing almost lost in a big way. Get it?
Judge Chuck Giampa scored it 116-112 and Jerry Roth had it 115-113, both for Mayweather, while judge Tommy Kaczmarek had it 115-113 for De La Hoya. Had Roth judged the 12th round for De La Hoya, the fight would have ended in a draw.
This despite the fact that Mayweather connected much more frequently, was never really hurt by De La Hoya and controlled much of the action in the final rounds as the Golden Boy noticeably grew weary.
I don't know what fight Kaczmarek was watching but it couldn't have been the one right in front of him. The only surprise about his sketchy scorecard was that Don King didn't have something to do with it.
But, alas, the Pretty Boy beat the Golden Boy, and people will fool themselves into believing boxing can somehow ride the momentum of a special night into a brighter future. The truth, however, is that those people are as delusional as Kaczmarek.
Mayweather managed to retained his unofficial title of the world's best fighter pound-for-pound Saturday with a split decision victory over the "Golden Boy" Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday night.
Problem was, the fight wasn't that close - no matter what the crowd or Mayweather Sr. thought of the decision. Had the younger Mayweather walked out of MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas with anything other than a title belt, there might have been enough call for reform in a sport that so badly needs it.
So, even though Mayweather won, boxing almost lost in a big way. Get it?
Judge Chuck Giampa scored it 116-112 and Jerry Roth had it 115-113, both for Mayweather, while judge Tommy Kaczmarek had it 115-113 for De La Hoya. Had Roth judged the 12th round for De La Hoya, the fight would have ended in a draw.
This despite the fact that Mayweather connected much more frequently, was never really hurt by De La Hoya and controlled much of the action in the final rounds as the Golden Boy noticeably grew weary.
I don't know what fight Kaczmarek was watching but it couldn't have been the one right in front of him. The only surprise about his sketchy scorecard was that Don King didn't have something to do with it.
But, alas, the Pretty Boy beat the Golden Boy, and people will fool themselves into believing boxing can somehow ride the momentum of a special night into a brighter future. The truth, however, is that those people are as delusional as Kaczmarek.
posted by Joel Anderson at 5:49 PM
2 Comments:
So now we're complaining about a CORRECT decision? Are you kidding? That's a huge step in boxing. I mean let's be honest. The fight was also one round away from being a unanimous decision.
How many fighters who were ripped off would have loved to earn such a close split-decision.
You have to think about how boxing is scored. It's not how the overally fight looks ... it's round by round.
Think if other sports were judged that way. Baseball inning by inning; football quarter by quarter; hockey period by period.
How many of those games would look to have a different outcome. The flaw is often with the scoring system, not the judges ... although there has been plenty of those too!
Excellent point Roy. Imagine an NBA game in which the Mavericks outscore the Warriors by 20 points in the first quarter, but are outscored by 10 combined points in the subseqent quarters to win the game 3-1.
Anyway, on to the fight. What I don't like about Mayweathers win over De La Hoya is that the fight was only impressive to boxing purists. The average fan would not have been able to enjoy the fight because it was no blood shed, no heavy hits, no ooh-ahh moments.
Knock, Knock. Who's there? M.M.A. MMA who? M.M.A. get boxing the hell out of the way.
I loved that in the post fight analysis the commentator tried to fend off MMA (free plug for MMA) by saying their fighters couldn't replicate what we just saw in the ring. NOTE TO COMMENTATOR: We didn't see anything special in the ring.
MMA all the way
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