I caught Saturday night's fight between Oscar De la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather. Two of the three judges found Mayweather the victor. I thought De la Hoya won. It was a close, exciting fight. It could have gone either way, but I'm disappointed in the way that it went.

One reason for boxing's downfall that I did not touch upon in an earlier post involves judging. I am not speaking of corrupt judging. There is certainly a tendency for fans to yell "fix" whenever their favored fighter loses on points. But rare are the cases, I think, when judges actually engage in shenanigans. What I am referring to is the growing tendency to score professional boxing the way amateur boxing is scored. The misnamed CompuBox statistics, which only require a human-operated click counter to tabulate punches thrown and landed, are an example of this. It places primacy upon how many times a boxer touches another boxer's face with his gloves. He needn't punch hard to impress the statistic junkies. He only need to connect.

This, it seemed, is what Mayweather did a lot of Saturday night. He played patty-cake with De La Hoya's face. De La Hoya landed less punches, but the ones he did land were actual punches. Mayweather's body moved when De La Hoya hit it. De La Hoya didn't seem to even flinch when Mayweather's gloves touched him.

There are a number of big-name fighters who fall into the patty-cake punch problem. These include Winky Wright, Chris Byrd, and Corey Spinks. They can elude punches. But they sure can't throw one--at least a good knockout punch. They pile up wins, but not fans. Diego Coralles, Arturo Gatti, Ricardo Mayorga and other fighters of lesser skills win fans because they fight. I think this should be rewarded by the judges. Boxing isn't a track meet. Boxing isn't tag.

The guidelines of judging actually vindicate my prejudices, and the prejudices of most fight fans, who--surprise!--want to see a fight. Fights are judged based on four categories: effective aggression, ring generalship, defense, and clean and hard punching. In the fight I watched, De la Hoya did everything better than Mayweather with the exception of defense. He clearly landed the cleaner and harder punches. Mayweather fought a passive fight, so by default De la Hoya won on effective aggression. I could see a Mayweather partisan arguing about ring generalship, but the fact is the reason the fight lived up to the hype is that De la Hoya fought his fight. The Golden Boy did a good job blocking the Pretty Boy's non-combination, exploratory punches, but clearly the quicker Mayweather bested De la Hoya in that category. Unfortunately, it is that category--one that I can appreciate as a fight fan but at the same time recognize as one of four criteria to judge a fight--that overrides all the others.

The result of this bias in judging are boring fights. Boxing nerds, like baseball nerds who vomit at 10-8 games or hockey nerds who wish to Europeanize the North American game, believe themselves cultivated in their method of judging such an uncultivated sport. They sniff at people who like knockouts, or toe-to-toe exchanges. But those people outnumber boxing nerds. They fill the seats and order pay per views. The boxers who reward them should be rewarded not necessarily because it makes for a more popular sport, but because the rules say that they should.

Boxing is called the sweet science. Proponents of the sweet science should keep in mind, for the sport's sake, that "sweet science" is just a euphemism for a fight.

De la Hoya did not loose that fight.

I watched it today on my friend's Tivo.

In short, De La Hoya was robbed.

Interesting and ironic that Mayweather even bothered to comment on how the UFC is a joke and then spent most of the night dancing and jiving his away from De La Hoya's jabs. Methinks he protests too much.

I PAID TO SEE A FIGHT AND SAW A TRACK MEET--I SUBMIT THAT MAYWEATHER IS POSSIBLY THE POUND FOR POUND BEST TRACK STAR. HE CERTAINLY IS NO FIGHTER. THE FIGHTERS OF OLD ARE ROLLING IN THEIR GRAVES TO EVEN HAVE MAYWEATHER CONSIDERED AS A FIGHTER.
I WAS THOROUGHLY DISGUSTED BY THIS "LEGEND IN HIS OWN MIND" MORON--DE LA HOYA TRIED TO MAKE A FIGHT BUT IT IS HARD TO DO WHEN YOUR ADVERSARY IS A TRACK STAR WITH POWDER PUFF PUNCHES.
DE LA HOYA WON AND MAYWEATHER'S PURSE SHOULD BE HELD IN ESCROW UNTIL HE DECIDES TO FIGHT AND ACTUALLY DOES SO.
LAR

Yeah, but he was classy and mature after the fight, posing in his faux Marine Corps tunic and spouting total foolishness. Ay carumba!

I think if you asked 100 Americans to name a boxer, 80 would name "Mike Tyson".

Aside from his antics, he was an incredibly exciting fighter to watch. You knew that he was going to come out swinging for a knockout from the first bell.

You're exactly right with your comments, boxing needs more fighting, less dancing.

Defense is in service of offense. Dancing is only to survive long enough to knock the stuffing out of the other guy. Merely surviving and leaving your opponent unmarked makes the whole exercise pointless. De la Hoya won handily.

I really wanted to watch this fight. I also really didn't want to pay to watch it. The only hope to bring back boxing is to air some quality fights free of charge.

Merriweather proponents are the same type of boxing fans that think Leonard actually beat Hagler in '87.

I think that the biggest reason that DeLaHoya lost the fight was from the eighth till the eleventh round he didn't use his left jab. I had DeLaHoya 5 to 4 going into the round. I thought that Mayweather's quickness and counter punching won the fight from that point on. Oscar is a great champion and a great crowdpleaser but he did the same thing in the Trinidad fight. He still won that fight. The only other times that he lost to anyone was the first fight that he had with Mosley and of course the fight with Hopkins. I don't see him retiring either nor do I see Mayweather doing the same. Take care.

daniel, very well writen piece. I haven't read an article in the sports page in 5 years that i agreed with more than what you stated in your piece. Now I have to say sorry for being away from Flynn Files for so long...

is there any particular reason that your site is now set to CST when u post? lol

Pay-per-view is killing the sport of boxing. People would be willing to pay $50 or $60 for GOOD fights. However, most recent pay-per-view fights were horribly mediocre. Perhaps boxing should do away with pay-per-view for now and start broadcasting fights on regular, FREE television.

In my experience, fights between two unknowns are usually better. The unknowns are hungry!

The loser, De La Hoya, made $45 million off of this fisasco. The loser made a paltry $20 million for, basically, a track meet. Another example of how people these days are sports stupid and will pay whatever the price is to see (or say they saw) a professional sporting event.

Lack of sleep? Let's try again...

The loser, De La Hoya, made $45 million off of this fiasco. The "winner" made a paltry $20 million for, basically, a track meet. Another example of how people these days are sports stupid and will pay whatever the price is to see (or say they saw) a professional sporting event.