113-112.
That’s how I scored Saturday’s Josh Taylor-Jack Catterall junior welterweight title fight.
I had Josh Taylor winning, by the way.
And there ain’t a damn thing wrong with my score, nor was there a damn thing wrong with any of the judges’ scores either.
On the official ledger, the defending champ Taylor took a split decision victory with 113-112 and 114-111 tallies in his favor against a 113-112 score in the challenger’s favor. All three of the judges issued fair and reasonable decisions. If you’re at all familiar with my work, you’d know that if I felt a robbery were committed in Glasgow on Saturday, I’d be the nastiest, most vile critic screaming the loudest about the bullshit.
Taylor-Catterall, though, was not a robbery. It was a very close fight where 113-112 or 114-111, either way, would’ve been reasonable.
The post-fight drama over the decision was understandable– and predictable– once Catterall started turning heads and winning rounds early.
Here’s what happened:
A likable underdog, given no shot at victory, goes to a big shot champion’s home country and immediately starts doing much better than expected. As time goes by and rounds start passing, he shows no sign of being “put in his place.” Fans and media sniff an upset– a HUGE upset– and get that excited buzz-feel in their bellies. After all, we, as fight fans, live for that “theater of the unexpected” stuff. Then, from that point where the upset vibe presents itself up until the end of the fight, scoring gets colored in favor of the underdog. Throw in a knockdown of the favorite (the first of his unblemished career), some blood, plus a jacked-up broadcast crew and the scoring REALLY gets colored in the underdog’s favor.
The psychology of non-robberies being labeled as robberies is not hard to grasp.
A boxing match, however, is not scored as a whole entity. Neither is it scored via compubox accumulation of landed punches. A boxing match is scored round-by-round, with every round treated as its own fully separate battle, independent from the fight as a whole. This reality sometimes makes for odd instances where the winner of the boxing match doesn’t appear to be the winner of the fight.
Yeah, that happens and it creates all sorts of weepy post-fight drama when the scoring contradicts the feel of an event. But ditching the way fights are scored would create scenarios where an impressive run in the first part of a bout would ensure a fighter’s victory, regardless of what happens afterward.
And that’s what happened in the Taylor-Catterall fight.
Catterall came on strong very early and had everyone on the edge of their seats. Taylor, however, was never left in the dust and did manage to take a couple of the early rounds while coming on to win many of the later ones.
When Taylor got dropped in the eighth round, I knew where all this was headed if Taylor didn’t come on to stop Catterall. In some regards, boxing is absolutely NOT the theater of the unexpected.
The “this has got to stop” brigade cranked up their caterwauls for Catterall and further pushed this false narrative of the blatant robbery of a noble warrior. The British Boxing Board of Control was cajoled into issuing a “will be investigating the scoring of this contest and will advise accordingly” comment by the flaming drama queens in the media, but they don’t have the authority to overturn the decision– even if the decision was disgustingly unjust.
But the outrage is a bunch of nothingness brought on by people who either don’t know how a fight is supposed to be scored or who got swept up in their feelies and are unwilling to backtrack their in-the-moment hot takes.
Robberies are a very real thing in boxing. Corruption and incompetence among officials/commissions/sanctioning bodies are very real things. Fighters are screwed way too often. But not every close fight is a robbery, no matter how much we REALLY wanted the underdog to win.
When fans and media throw around the word “robbery” after a close fight goes to the perceived wrong guy, they do a real disservice to the true and way-too-frequent boxing thefts that do take place.
For instance, the WBA interim welterweight title fight between Mykal Fox and Gabriel Maestre in August was a true robbery. On that night, Maestre, who was later shown to have ties to WBA officials, took a unanimous decision in a bout I scored 117-110 for a Fox I saw to be fairly dominant. Fox fought the fight of his career in the opportunity of his life, battled his way to victory, only to walk away with a loss. THAT is tragic.
Catterall, like Mykal Fox, also fought the fight of his career in the opportunity of his life. He deserves all the credit in the world for his performance and his composure. He deserves another title shot and he deserves next-level money the next time out as well. He just didn’t do enough to beat Taylor. The close scores in the close rounds can be debated, but there was no robbery.