Judging the Rounds

The NABF is pleased to bring you a series of articles by Judge Tom Shreck, with an accompanying Youtube link. Enjoy.

Scoring the Close Rounds: Evaluating the Quality of a Punch

Clean punching is the clearest of the scoring criteria. It’s the most fundamental unit of boxing and should be the primary focus of our concentration.

Are all punches created equal? Of course not, nor should we count them all the same. Amateur boxing uses such a system and the results of amateur bouts are much different than professional fights. Professional boxing is about damage. While Olympic style boxing focuses merely on the points of a landed punch our job is focused on the assessment of the level of damage punches accomplish.

The amateur judge’s job is to look for punches that land. Professional judges don’t have it so easy. Our assignment is to interpret the quality of the punches we witness. That’s easy when we see a landed punch stagger or knockdown a fighter but when a punch merely lands how do we evaluate its value?

Like the supreme court judge who when asked about how he could discern art from pornography, we may be tempted to say: “I know it when I see it!” That explanation leaves a lot of room for interpretation and probably won’t satisfy a questioning supervisor or commissioner who is looking for a clear reason why you turned in the score that you did.

If instead we focus on the body mechanics of a good punch we can answer the question with more specifics. The proper execution of a punch isn’t a random event, a lucky shot, nor is it different for each fighter. A quality punch has the weight of the fighter properly behind it and it is thrown from a balanced stance with the optimal shifting of body weight coming at the right time.

Wide, looping and off balance punches may land and may even do significant damage but all things being equal they will not have the same value that a punch delivered with adherence to the fundamentals. Study the components of a good jab, cross, hook and uppercut and you’ll be able to identify the excellent from the good and the good from the poor. And when your supervisor or commissioner asks you why you scored a round the way you did you can site very specifically the components of the fighter’s technique and what made them strong or weak.

For video examples of good and poor punching techniques please visit my Youtube page at: http://www.youtube.com/user/scoringcloserounds/ .

Tom Schreck is a NABF member and has been judging fights for 15 years.