Olympic Boxing Scoring

Alright most of you might not care about this, but it really bugs me. The Olympic committee changed the way the scoring was done after 1988 games, in which Roy Jones Jr. was the beneficiary of the worst screw job in Olympic Boxing history. The changed it to "computer scoring" to take away the human bias. Unfortunately it's simply electronic human scoring. Three judges have a button for each fighter. Every time a fighter lands a scoring blow to the torso or head the judge presses the button. If all three judges press the button within a single second then the fighter is awarded a point. There are three major problems with the system.

First it has not fixed the problem. The judges aren't pressing the buttons. The scores so far in the Olympics have been extremely low. There are two explanations. In the words of Teddy Atlas (one of the world's best boxing commentators), "either it's incompetence or corruption." I watch a fight with a non-USA boxer that had won the world championships. He landed about seven clean shots in a row and was awarded no points.

The second problem is that is awards no extra points or weighted points for knockdowns or standing 8 counts. The reason, in my humble opinion, is to discriminate against fighters from the Americas. Notice I didn't say America. The style of Latin American fighters and fighters from the USA does not lend itself to just scoring points. This is a reason why many successful Olympic boxers have a hard time as pros. They are basically two different sports.

The third major problem with this system is that the equipment is expensive. So it is not used in most non-Olympic amateur bouts. It is not used in the Golden Gloves competition. It is obviously not used in club fights that amateurs take part in. This hurts fighters that don't come from countries without sports colleges. Russia, Cuba, and China are examples of countries who have these kinds of amateur programs. America obviously does not. This has to do with our lack of track education system, which I don't really want to get into. The problem is that successful American and Latin American boxers (excluding Cuba) have to retrain themselves how to fight this different style.