The Golden Boy Robbed?

By Roy Pickering

I typically have little appreciation for sporting events that are subjectively decided upon. One of the elements I respect in a competitive athletic match-up is that the outcome is conclusively determined. I don’t watch sports to better appreciate the ambiguity of life.

I watch them to see which combatant will be able to defeat the other. There is a world of difference between a beauty pageant and a sports contest for a wide variety of obvious reasons. One of them is what I have just discussed. Baseball or football or basketball games, much like tennis or soccer matches, are all decided by which participant has put the most points on the scoreboard. These points are not intangible things. There are concrete definitions for what constitutes a point, or run, or goal, or whatever the measurement of achievement is called in a particular sport. They are not awarded based on a third party’s interpretation of what has been seen, but rather, on legitimate, definitive, tangible accomplishment. A runner does not win a race because he ran it more gracefully than the competition, but because he ran it in less time, because he was first to reach the finish line. Sometimes a result is so close that it takes slow motion replay of the filmed footage to decipher who the winner was. If it is determined that one runner reached the finish line 1/100 of a second earlier than another, a decision is made on this fact and nothing else. No judge or jury can be bribed to declare that the camera and the timer are liars and will not be paid attention to. The race is not given to the more popular runner, but to the one who ran it fastest. Victory is not automatically given in a tennis match to the more attractive player, or else Anna Kournikova would have far more tournament victories under her lovely belt. In sports, the matter of who the winner is, who the loser is, or if the contest is a draw, is supposed to be a matter of fact, not opinion. There may be some judgment calls made throughout a contest, but victory is ultimately to be earned by one of the competitors, not decided on a whim by someone with good seats. This is how I prefer sports to transpire. After all, opinion can be influenced, it can be biased, it can be ridiculously misguided by innumerable factors. Facts are what they are, take them or leave them, like them or not.

To every rule there is an exception. I love boxing. Yet despite its brutal nature, it is the sport I regularly watch that is most like a beauty pageant in the way it is scored. Not that this was originally the case. In the early days of pugilism, two fighters went at it and continued until only one of them was left standing. Matters did not automatically and inconclusively end when a certain number of rounds had been completed. Until someone knocked somebody out, or somebody quit, they just kept going at it. Eventually this was determined to be inhuman, just as it was decided that fighters must wear gloves rather than fight bare fisted and bash each other’s brains in. Boxing continues to be a very dangerous sport, a potentially lethal one. It has plenty of opponents who wish to abolish it altogether. I’m not sure why car racing doesn’t seem to have nearly as much opposition even though it has more fatalities and less margin for error. But be that as it may, it is obvious that there is room for improvement in boxing, much reform to be done if Senator McCain ever gets his way. Yet it cannot be denied that the sweet science is far more civilized today than it was at the outset. One result of the efforts to make boxing less barbaric is that at the end of ten to twelve rounds, there are often two men left standing. In these cases the decision about who the victor is must be left in the hands of judges, not unlike a season of American Idol.

The decision on who has won a beauty pageant, or a figure skating competition, or a gymnastics competition is an arbitrary one open to endless debate. For every reason that can be given for why one competitor should be declared the winner, there is a reasonable alternate reason for why someone else entirely deserves the victory. It so happens that with the notable exception of the Tanya Harding / Nancy Kerrigan era, I usually could care less who has won a figure skating competition. As for gymnastics, while I must admit that Paul Hamm's controversial gold medal "victory" in Athens has caught my interest (you have to feel sorry for a guy who is given so little time to bask in Olympic glory, even if you're pretty sure Mary Lou Retton could easily kick the guy's butt in a fight), I typically don't care much about these competitions either. I haven't given a damn who was crowned Miss America since the all too brief reign of Vanessa Williams. However, I often do vest myself emotionally in the outcome of a boxing match. So when the announcer states that we are going to the scorecards to find out what has been decided, this is my least favorite moment of any fight. Regardless of what I have seen up to that point and what opinion I have formed about it, I know that the judges saw matters in their own manner for their own reasons, and their group opinion is the only one that matters. Boxing is notorious for inexplicably reasoned judgments being made. Every time this occurs, I swear along with countless other fight fans that I have had enough of this crooked racket. Too many times, such idiotically rendered conclusions lead me to declare that boxing is not an honorable sport, and therefore not worthy of my attention to it. Yet I am always lured back, for at its best, a boxing contest is an event without peer, a fascinating spectacle to those of us with a little blood lust within our hearts. Anyone who watched the Gatti-Ward trilogy understands what I am talking about. Sylvester Stallone did a wonderful job of fictionalizing the appeal of boxing with his Rocky films, and their immense popularity speaks for itself. But there’s nothing quite like the real thing.

Due to its ability to occasionally thrill me, time and time again I disregard the tendency of boxing to disappoint or flat out infuriate me. The most recent example of the latter was the title fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Shane Mosley. As I watched it on pay per view, I felt that the Golden Boy had earned himself a rather routine victory. Sugar Shane had simply done too little, and gone about it too late. I was not especially impressed by Oscar’s performance. I did not believe he had ever really hurt Mosley. It was my opinion that Oscar fought in a very cautious manner in order to best keep himself out of harm’s way while dictating the pace of the fight. Mosley seemed to be landing harder and more effective punches whenever he did get around to throwing them. But he too was overly cautious, especially in the first half of the fight, and also rather one dimensional, throwing haymakers whenever he saw an opportunity rather than being active and using his fists to swing the pace of the fight in his own favor. As champion, even though he fought mostly going backwards, I felt that De La Hoya had done enough to emerge victorious. As challenger, it seemed to me that Sugar Shane had not done nearly enough to deserve either his nickname or the championship belts at stake. Throw in factors that shouldn’t have mattered but unfortunately often do influence decisions made in professional prize fights, such as the Golden Boy’s large fan base, and I fully expected that the judges’ decision would match my expectations.

In the days since the fight, I have pondered why my expectations were not met. Was I heavily influenced by the opinionated commentary of HBO’s broadcast team? They were all convinced that it had been an easy victory for Oscar and expressed shock and disgust at the official verdict. George Foreman went so far as to exclaim that a conspiracy had taken place, but Big George says a lot of stuff that is best to be taken with a grain of salt, which is no doubt part of his appeal. Shane Mosley’s trainer/father certainly seemed to believe that his son/fighter was behind in the fight, for he did one heck of a job convincing Shane of this between rounds. Sugar appeared to be in a mild state of disbelief at the ruling in his favor, though he claimed that this was because he thought Oscar’s popularity in Vegas would be his undoing. De La Hoya was clearly mystified, though by no means rendered speechless by the decision against him. I fully expected him to call out for Johnnie Cochran in his post-fight interview. Viewers were made well aware throughout the contest of punch stat numbers that were heavily in favor of Oscar. He was throwing considerably more punches and landing them at a higher percentage than was his adversary. It seems logical that this would lead to him being declared the winner. Then again, boxing judges do have not have access to these statistics. They must use the naked eye to determine which man is more of a “ring general”, and which one is utilizing a superior degree of “effective aggressiveness”. Apparently they were more impressed by Mosley moving forward and throwing what appeared to be harder punches that seemed to sometimes hurt his opponent, than they were with De La Hoya moving backwards, throwing and landing many more punches that appeared to be softer and less damaging to his opponent. Several newspaper columnists have agreed with the verdict reached in Las Vegas, so if indeed Oscar De La Hoya is the victim of a conspiracy, it would have to be an awfully large one extending well beyond sin city.

I still hold the opinion that Oscar did enough to win the fight. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I do not believe Shane Mosley did enough to win it, which should have made De La Hoya the victor by default. I probably was influenced somewhat by HBO’s commentators, and most definitely by the punch stat numbers, into feeling that De La Hoya dominated the fight more than he actually did. Then again, Jim, Larry, George and Harold were saying nothing I had not deduced for myself, and punch stat numbers are a useful tool that quantifies what is happening in the ring. I also do not agree with the argument being put forth about ringside viewers having a true vantage point while television viewers are seeing the action through a distorted lens. If anything, it is the television watcher with an unobstructed view from three camera angles along with the benefit of slow motion replay between rounds, who is at a greater viewing advantage.

There are enough sports journalists who side with the judges' decision rather than with those who believe Oscar dominated the contest for me to conclude that this is just one those odd fights that no two people view the same. Perhaps there is no right or wrong verdict to be reached, just differing opinions based on differing criteria, apples being compared to oranges. In retrospect, I can see how one might opt to score in favor of Mosley’s sporadic aggression and heavier looking punches over Oscar’s consistent skills as a tactician. And I need only look back to the previous fight between these two boxers, or a little further back to the De La Hoya – Trinidad fight, to realize that the Golden Boy will always be penalized when he doesn’t exhibit more of a warrior mentality against a name opponent. If he had fought Mosley or Trinidad the way he fought against Fernando Vargas, Oscar probably would have earned the decision in each of these battles. Either that or else somebody would have been knocked out, leaving the subjective opinions of judges entirely out of the equation, which would have been fine by me, for that's just the way I like it.

About the Author:

Gary Whittaker is the editor of T.E.N Magazine. You can visit the site at www.tenwebzine.com/. You will be able to find more great articles on sports, politics or other subjects, so check it out! Gary may be contacted by email at editor@tenwebzine.com.