Olympic Scoring for Boxing: Are You Seen'n What I'm See'n?

OK, checking the big boxing tote board, two sessions a day...24 bouts a day...times seven 16hr. competition days in a row so far...errr...carry the one...man, they're starting to run together!


Day 8 (I think!) from the Olympic boxing venue and like many of you watching boxing from Beijing, confusion reigns. Judging from the line up of countries with their boxers in a bunch, international amateur boxing has a huge problem on it's hands. Their credibility is on the ropes.

Indeed, after shooting over 150 Olympic Boxing matches from my perch in the upper deck of the Worker's Indoor Arena, I think I'm ready to offer a humble TVCommando's through the lens opinion on Olympic boxing scoring - wacked!

It appears the International Boxing folks have managed to do the impossible; design a scoring system more complicated (and flawed) than the scoring for Olympic Figure Skating. No easy feat. Sadly, the Olympic boxing ring like many other Olympic fields of dreams suffers from scoring controversies.

In it's current form, boxing scoring has no accountability by turning judges into button pushers. With all of the dynamics of two guys moving, jabbing, weaving and throwing sometimes multiple punches, this system seems too complicated and painfully slow. For a punch to register as a point three of five judges have to press a button (a red button for the red corner, and blue button for the blue corner...get it?) within one second of impact for the scoring system to register one point. It's almost comical to watch a fighter land what is obviously a scoring punch and have the point register with the other fighter, or worse, not at all.

For now, I've learned from boxing pros like Teddy Atlas that several sure things exist in international amateur boxing, left jabs will slow down a charging opponent, everyone hates the scoring system, and by the time the next summer Olympics roll around, the scoring system will probably change.