World Boxing: Focus on scoring for fair results
NEWDELHI: Scoring has been a grey area in boxing for as long as one remembers. The international boxing federation has tweaked the scoring system a number of times but the system is still not foolproof.
There is no major tournament where the sport doesn’t hog the limelight due to controversial scoring. The most recent controversy came at the Jakarta Asian Games when two North Korean boxing coaches refused to leave the ring as they protested their boxer losing a close bout against China. They wanted to lodge an official protest but in the absence of any mechanism of review or protest they could not do much.
They were kicked out of the Games following the fracas.
World boxing body, AIBA, said it will introduce a mechanism to protest or review bouts from next year. “The AIBA has been, in cooperation with the IOC, which advised to retain PricewaterhouseCoopers as a company to oversee or analyse the refereeing programme/structure and to give recommendations. So far the recommendations have been only positive for AIBA and we continue to working to improve the badly inherited referring system from the past,” said AIBA president Gafur Rakhimov.
Indian boxers have also been affected due to controversial scoring. The most publicised was during the 2014 Incheon Games.
Laishram Sarita Devi, part of India’s squad in this world meet, seemed to have done everything to beat home boxer Park Jina, but was stunned after the 60kg semifinal bout was awarded to the Korean, who ended with silver.
A tearful Sarita caused a stir during the medal ceremony when she refused to accept her bronze medal, and instead put that around Park’s neck. The world body banned her for a year for the incident. From the manual scoring till the early 1990s to introduction of electronic scoring and the current ‘10-point must’ rule, the system has evolved over the years (see box). At the 2012 London Olympics, AIBA brought out major changes in scoring, aligning it more with professional boxing, but there were still allegations of large-scale rigging of bouts. Eventually, after the 2016 Rio Olympics, AIBA suspended all 36 judges and officials.