Things Seen Differently at Home Boxing Office

The world super-welterweight championship of professional boxing was on the line Saturday in Las Vegas and, on paper, it looked to be the mismatch of the centuries.

In one corner, studying jabs and hooks in the same manner as the ancient Greeks, was the naked eye.

In the other, aided by computerized punch counts and slow-motion replay and corner audio and all the technological gadgetry 21st century science can muster, was all-powerful almighty television.

According to the final scorecard, in something of an upset, the naked eye won.

All three judges, viewing the Shane Mosley-Oscar De La Hoya fight the old-school way, the B.C. way, gave the decision to Mosley.

So did all three Los Angeles Times writers scoring the fight, as well as the majority of the other ringside boxing writers, armed with their own eyesight and judgment.

HBO’s television coverage team saw it quite differently. Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant, George Foreman and Harold Lederman were all convinced De La Hoya had won and said so before the judges’ scores were announced.

As the final bell rang, Lampley declared that De La Hoya “seems to wrap up a victory over Shane Mosley.”

Foreman applauded De La Hoya’s tactical preparation and execution, saying he fought “a perfect fight. Oscar De La Hoya should have this easily.”

Merchant called it a “a clear-cut victory for De La Hoya. Dominated the first half of the fight. Fought him almost even in the second half of the fight. A terrific fight for De La Hoya.”

Lederman, the Hall of Fame boxing judge HBO employs to score each round, had De La Hoya winning, 115-113.

The three judges had the same numbers but a different winner: Mosley, 115-113, across the board.

“Terrible,” Foreman said, disgust in his voice.

“Say it loud, George,” Lampley said.

Foreman: “This is terrible. This is not what you want boxing to be. De La Hoya won that fight.”

Lampley: “Frankly, I agree with you. And so does Harold Lederman. And you heard what Larry Merchant said.”

Within seconds, mobile phones began ringing on press row. Boxing writers answered them and listened to angry friends and editors -- who had watched the fight on HBO -- expressing outrage and/or confusion over the result.

For the previous hour, television viewers had been inundated with CompuBox punch stats indicating De La Hoya was dominating the bout

Ringside judges and reporters didn’t have immediate access to the punch stats or the corner audio. And, unlike Team HBO, they hadn’t sat in on 30-minute pre-fight strategy sessions with both boxers.

TV or not TV? That is the ever-vexing question for subjective sports such as boxing and figure skating, although if Saturday’s controversial result had any silver lining, it was to prove definitively that boxing and figure skating are very, very different animals.

It is, on many levels, the best thing that can possibly be said about boxing.

The figure skating way: Scott Hamilton and Sandra Bezic would be screaming highway robbery, the handsome Latino was jobbed, come on, America, we’re not going to stand for this! Boxing officials would be sending out for a duplicate championship belt.

The boxing way: Oh, well. That’s boxing.

“When this sort of thing happens,” Merchant said on-air, “we’re all saying, and certainly all you out there are saying, ‘Did we see a different fight than everybody else?’

“All I can imagine is that they felt Mosley was landing the harder punches. I can’t account for it. I thought De La Hoya won the fight. It’s not the worst decision I ever saw. It’s a bit surprising that it’s happened twice to De La Hoya here in Las Vegas -- once against [Felix] Trinidad and now again. And I’ll think we’ll see De La Hoya again.”

HBO will rebroadcast the fight Saturday at 6:45 p.m. In the interim, Lampley says he has conducted some “self-examination” about his role in the broadcast.

“Some of the people I respect most in the world and in the world of boxing scored the fight for Mosley,” Lampley said in a phone interview. “On the other hand, when I was worried about whether I’d been a part of some debacle, I called the six or eight people whom I regard as the best experts, or the ones I most respect, and they all felt De La Hoya had won.

“I don’t doubt that 75% to 80% of the writers think that Mosley won. It’s one of those tough” calls.

Lampley acknowledged being influenced by the microphones picking up corner conversation between Mosley and his father, Jack, who trains the fighter.

“I was heavily influenced Saturday night by the fact that I thought Shane and Jack were sure they were losing the fight,” he said. “Now, since then, I’ve thought carefully about that one.... I shouldn’t be influenced by that. The bottom line is: Shane and Jack aren’t the official scorers, either. It doesn’t matter whether they think they’re winning or losing. They’re not the ones whose judgment about that counts.”

He also said the pre-fight discussions with the boxers are “bound to affect, at least subliminally, our view” as to which fighter is better implementing his intended strategy.

“I think we have, in a nutshell, too much information to have a perspective that’s the same as the judges or someone who sits in the arena without television audio and television bells and whistles and watches the fight from their seat. It’s really a dramatically different experience....

“You can say that we’re either blessed by having much more information or we’re contaminated by having much more information.”

At this point, there’s only one thing not in dispute.

“You just never know,” Lampley said, “what’s going to happen in a prizefight.”