Judge defends score card: Fight is not ‘American Idol’
One of the judges in the controversial World Boxing Organization ( WBO) welterweight title bout between Filipino Manny Pacquiao and American Timothy Bradley Jr. has spoken out to defend his scorecard.
Bradley was out-punched, out- landed and generally dominated by Pacquiao through most of their 12-round encounter last Saturday in Las Vegas (Sunday in Manila).
Despite this, the unbeaten American was shockingly named the winner via split decision, with scores of 113115, 115-113, and 115-113.
One of the judges who scored it for Bradley, Duane Ford, spoke with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to defend the way he scored the bout.
“I thought Bradley gave
Pacquiao a boxing lesson,” he said. “I thought a lot of the rounds were close. Pacquiao missed a lot of punches and I thought he was throwing wildly.”
CJ Ross, the other judge who scored the fight for Bradley, was not available for comments.
Only Jerry Roth scored the bout in Pacquiao’s favor.
“I’m looking for effective aggressiveness. I thought Pacquiao won a lot of the early rounds, and I thought Bradley came on in the end. That’s why I gave Bradley the last three rounds,” Roth said.
“But I still thought Pacquiao had done enough to win,” he added.
The judges were roundly criticized by Top Rank boss Bob Arum, who called them the “three blind mice” in the postfight press conference.
Arum said the decision was “ridiculous” and signaled a “death knell” for boxing. The promoter even offered to have the judges fly to Los Angeles to get their eyes checked by his own doctor.
But Ford defended himself, saying, “This wasn’t an ‘American Idol’ contest.”
“If I judge for the people, I shouldn’t be a judge,” he said.
“If this were ‘American Idol,’ without a doubt, Manny Pacquiao would have won,” Ford said. “But it was not. I gave an honest opinion. I had Pacquiao up 4-2, I think, at the end of six rounds. I thought he hurt Bradley a couple of times early in the fight. But when the bell rang to end that round, it was over and what happens in one round doesn’t carry over to the next round. They’re separate units.”
He said in the second half of the fight, Pacquiao picked off a lot of punches to the head, but Bradley landed some hard body shots.
“That hurt Pacquiao. I don’t mean it hurt him in the sense of it physically hurting him, but in terms of scoring and piling up points. Bradley did an excellent job standing his ground as a boxer. Remember, it’s a boxing match and Bradley demonstrated his ability to box expertly,” Ford said.
Pacquiao, however, was gracious in defeat, saying in numerous interviews that he respected the judges’ decision, but at the same time insisted that he was the real winner.
Bradley, for his part, said there should be a rematch in November so there can be a more decisive result.
“What do you want me to do? There were three judges and they saw it the way they saw it. We definitely need to do this again in November and make it more decisive for everyone,” he said.
Ford spoke by telephone to Yahoo! Sports on Sunday. He said the criticism is part of the job he accepted, but said those criticizing the outcome are almost certainly not familiar with the way fights are judged.
– ABS-CBN news