International boxing and shady scores

What’s international boxing you say? It’s the one where fighters represent their countries, not one where pro fighters earn millions “para sa bayan” ala Manny Pacquiao. Amateur boxing is trying to rid itself of the amateur part by copying the pros, so I can’t really call it amateur boxing anymore. So instead, I’ll adopt football’s standard, where there’s club football and the international game, the former is for money and the latter is for glory.

So international boxing, for me, covers events like the SEA Games and Olympics and right now, host Malaysia is raising a lot of eyebrows with the questionalbe wins of some of their fighters.

There’s one by Muhamad Redzuan against Carlo Paalam of the Philippines.

How dubious was the decision, here’s a choice excerpt of Ryan Songalia’s report for Rappler: “One such incident included a third-round sequence where Redzuan leapt in and grabbed Paalam, then dug the palm of his glove into Paalam’s face, for which Paalam was warned as if he was the offending party.”

There have been other incidents involving Malaysian fighters too, a trend that no longer surprises most fans. Refs helping other fighters to win? Didn’t an Olympian give the middle-finger salute to a judge on his way out of the Rio Olympics?

I witnessed shady officiating first hand when I covered the 2005 SEA Games and unfortunately it involved a Pinoy fighter. Nope, the shady officiating wasn’t for us.

Back then, boxing was using its old rules; rules that were adopted to discourage or eliminate shady scoring kuno after an infamous shady-scoring incident involving one Floyd Mayweather. Under the old rules, there were five judges and each had two buttons, for a punch to score, three of the five judges must press the same button simultaneously.

I don’t know if there was something wrong with the button for the Philippines because boy, was he piling it up against the Thai fighter but the points were added to the Thai boxer. The crowd, sensing something dubious, began pointing to the scoreboard every time the Pinoy fighter connected on a punch and a point was added on the foe. Sabotage crossed my mind. “Did they somehow mix the wires or something?”

Apparently it crossed the fans’ mind too because when the final bell rang and the Thai’s hand was raised in triumph, water bottles, coins and a sandwich--a darn sandwich--was thrown to the ring. I was in media row, mentally composing a story as it was close to midnight (hadn’t eaten too) when a Thai journalist and an Ilonggo broadcaster had to be physically separated after a heated exchange. That was 12 years ago in Bacolod. A few years ago, international boxing abandoned that scoring method in an effort to eliminate cheating. That happened after a newspaper exposed (take that folks who hate journalists!) a gold for millions scheme involving one rich nation during the 2012 London Olympics.

Guess what, the lasting image of Olympic boxing four years later is one of a boxer giving the middle finger salute.