Judge a Major Fight, and Ye Shall Be Judged

He didn’t wear gloves and he wasn’t in the ring, but nobody took more damaging blows in last month’s Oscar De La Hoya-Shane Mosley title fight than Marc Ratner.

Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, selected the three judges for the rematch, held at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena. And Ratner found fingers pointed in his direction after all three judges had scored the fight for Mosley, 115-113.

De La Hoya threatened to launch “an investigation” of the decision. Promoter Bob Arum vowed he would leave boxing, then said he would stop promoting in Nevada, questioned the betting line and charged improprieties in the selection of the judges.

Both De La Hoya and Arum, without evidence of wrongdoing, have since backed off.

The Nevada Commission had planned to call Arum to its meeting Oct. 15 to explain his remarks, but has since agreed to accept his written apology and drop the matter.

Ratner says the damage done to the sport is not so easily healed.

“In other major sports, when there is an officiating controversy, it goes down as a bad judgment call,” he said. “When there was a bad call in the 49er-Giant playoff game last season, a horrible call, they still went forward with the next game.

“Unfortunately, in boxing, it doesn’t go forward for a while. First, we have to go through all these machinations. A questionable decision in boxing takes on all these nefarious undertones that the fight is rigged or the results are predetermined.”

Chuck Giampa, a Nevada judge for 19 years, agrees.

“I was surprised and disappointed by what Bob Arum said,” Giampa said. “He should know better. If there’s something out there, bring the evidence. Don’t just make wild accusations. When a promoter says something like that, it makes a lot of noise and people pick up on that. They may not pick up on the retraction.”

Said Ratner: “What makes me feel bad is that the people in this sport are the ones who hurt the sport the most. I believe this is a sport that should be treated with respect, like any other major sport.”

Toward that end, Ratner has devised a long, exhausting path would-be officials must trudge before they are entitled to sit ringside, official scorecard in hand.

Judges start at the amateur level.

“It may take three or four years with no pay before they can move up,” Ratner said.

Candidates must take a 25-question, multiple choice and essay test, written and administered by Ratner. They train by going to club shows, judging on unofficial scorecards turned in to Ratner.

And then, even if they have passed all these hurdles, prospective judges must wait for openings.

“I start my judges in lesser fights to build up their confidence,” Ratner said.

He has 23 or so judges in his rotation, 12 to 13 of whom are qualified to work world title fights. In addition, he might use international judges for the mega-fights, as he did in De La Hoya-Mosley II. And he tries to accommodate the sanctioning bodies, who want representatives on the judging crew.

Previous work is also a factor. For example, a judge who was involved in the close, controversial majority decision Felix Trinidad won over De La Hoya 1999 would not be used in another De La Hoya fight.

Judges’ pay is determined by the fighters’ purses. For small fights, a judge usually makes $150, for a major event $1,300-$2,000. The three judges for De La Hoya-Mosley II made $5,000 apiece. The largest payday Ratner can recall was for Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield II in 1997, which earned each judge $7,500.

So what makes a judge worthy of such a paycheck?

“Ninety percent of the rounds in boxing, anybody can judge, whether you are in the first row or the 20th row,” Ratner said. “It’s the 10% that are close that are the difference between winning and losing. It takes 100% concentration. You have to totally focus for three minutes.”

Officials like to say they know they are doing a good job when they can remember every round in detail after the fight -- but couldn’t tell you what the ring-card girls looked like.

Hardly anybody can remember what the judges looked like. They sit silently on raised seats, each on another side of the ring, eyes never leaving the action. Fans are quick to criticize the judges’ decision if it doesn’t agree with the way they saw it, or bet it. But the fans don’t score along with the judges. Usually, they don’t even know the criteria the judges apply or the methods they use.

Two judges, Lou Filippo from California and Jerry Roth from Nevada, agreed to answer the most commonly asked questions:

* What are you focusing on during a fight?

“I look for effective punches and ring generalship,” said Filippo, who has been ringside as judge and referee for 43 years. “Punch stats don’t mean a thing. If a guy hits his opponent with three or four jabs, one solid punch will balance that out. Defense counts. That’s part of ring generalship, making a guy miss his opponent all night long. A fighter has got to be effective aggressive. A guy can be aggressive, but not effective. That’s not going to get him points.”

Roth, whose first fight as a judge was Larry Holmes-Gerry Cooney in 1982, sees it a little differently.

“I don’t know what ring generalship is,” Roth said. “I look for effective punches. You’ve got to weigh the jab. Is it a good jab? How many jabs does it take to outweigh a big punch? Larry Holmes had a heck of a jab. Other guys have a jab that’s just pitter-patter. Some guys will judge on whether a fighter took the other guy out of his fight plan. I don’t know what the fight plan was. If it’s a real close round, I’ll give it to the guy who tried to force the action.

“Very rarely do we have even rounds. I look for things to make a decision. If a guy is trying to make the fight, I lean toward him if nothing happens in the round. But something always happens.”

Concentration was never harder to maintain than in the 1993 Holyfield-Riddick Bowe rematch, when a man parachuted into the ring.

“There was a 21-minute delay in the middle of a round,” Ratner said. “As a judge, you have to know where you were when the fight was stopped. I went around and made sure each judge had marked down who they had winning because I was pretty sure we were going to continue. We did and that proved to be a pivotal round in the scoring.”

* Do you divide the three-minute round into three segments?

“Yeah, I do,” Filippo said. “I’ll say to myself, ‘OK, the first minute, that guy took it big. The next minute, he barely took it. The third minute, the other guy barely took it.’ ”

Roth uses another system.

“I have a winner in mind from the first punch on,” he said. “And then, it may go back and forth as the round goes on.”

Ratner knows that some judges use the clock method, but he doesn’t want them taking their eyes off the action.

“You have to have a clock in your head, like a jockey,” he said.

Filippo agrees.

“You more or less know the time,” he said.

* Is there anything to the adage that you have to take the fight from the champion?

“You don’t think like that,” Filippo said. “You’ve got to give it to the guy you think won the round. I know some people say a fighter didn’t take the championship because he didn’t beat the other guy that bad. That’s hogwash.”

Judges are required to turn in their scorecards after each round. Roth and Filippo say they don’t keep cheat sheets so they’ll know which fighter they have ahead as the rounds pile up.

“At the end of a fight, sometimes, I don’t know who won,” Roth said.

Amateur scorers, like boxing writers, have been known to mull over their decisions at the end of a round, even wait for a replay of a crucial punch. Not so with professional judges.

“When the bell ending the round rings, I have a winner,” Roth said. “I don’t have the privilege of looking at tape, of looking at slo-mo before making a decision.”

When the fight is over, Ratner sits down with the judges and reviews their scoring. He keeps extensive records on how often they agree, and he expects them to agree at least 90% of the time.

Last year, Roth had the same winner as one or both of the other judges in 246 of 262 rounds, or 93.9% of the time.

Ratner said, “If one judge has a fighter winning 10-2 in rounds and the other two have it 7-5, I will sit down with the judge who had it so one-sided and we’ll watch the tape of the fight together.”

Still, despite all the caution, things happen.

Ratner still shudders at the post-fight confusion at the Frontier Hotel in 1999 after a bout between Derrick Harmon and Greg Wright.

Ratner checked the scorecards and told the ring announcer the match was a draw. But after the fighters had departed, judge Paul Smith mentioned he had called one round a 10-10 draw. Ratner, having seen a 10 in Harmon’s column, had assumed Wright had been given only nine points.

The added point gave Wright the victory on Smith’s scorecard and a split decision -- and Harmon his first loss.

“I had to call Derrick and tell him,” Ratner said. “It was the toughest telephone call I ever had to make. It was very, very embarrassing. A very tough moment.”

So, yes, judging mistakes are made. Ratner can accept that.

As long as they are honest mistakes.