With a new boxing season upon us, there was a real buzz about the fight taking place this Friday night at The Brentwood Centre in Essex. September 11 2009 will be remember in boxing circles, or at least British boxing circles as the night Tyson Fury was brought down to Earth and yet still managed to add a win to his perfect record.
Criticism
The Manchester fighter, who has been a professional for less than a year, has been making waves and headlines over the past 9 months, and has had many tipping him as the biggest British heavyweight prospect. Whilst Tyson has indeed looked impressive, stopping all 7 of his opponents before Friday night, he has also come under some criticism amongst fight fans. So far, the 21 year old, named after the youngest ever heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, had been fed on journeymen offering little opposition or resistance to his superior reach and power.
“He will come unstuck against better opposition”, his doubters said. “His power isn’t that great”. “He needs better conditioning”.
English champion John McDermott is no pushover, and asked these very questions of the 6ft 8inch fighter, adding scepticism to just how far Fury can actually go.
Insults
During Fury’s meteoric rise up the domestic ladder, his fellow countryman John McDermott has been on the wrong side of a few controversial decisions to the British champion Danny Williams, whom “Big Bad” John almost stopped.
Fury, looking for some more recognition and a belt, targeted McDermott having gained confidence in the ring and began using his mouth to pursue the Essex fighter. Fury questioned McDermott’s conditioning and referred to him as “McMuffin” as well as a number of other derogatory insults. Big John, of course, did not take kindly to this.
And so on Friday night, in front of the Sky TV cameras, these two big men entered the ring to face off. Fury, the much taller man had a 9inch reach advantage and entered the arena in typical Tyson fashion, dancing down the steps and into the ring. McDermott, with age and experience on his side looked focused, determined and angry.
Controversy
We soon saw the hot prospect coming unstuck. His superior reach wasn’t much of an advantage and the champion was finding success in his right hand, catching Fury at will at times. While it was a scrappy fight in parts, there was a clear winner for each round. Generally, by most accounts the man getting in front was John McDermott.
The controversy came at the end of the fight. A fight in which the referee is the sole judge, he raised the arm of Tyson Fury to much shock and dismay of most of the crowd and the bemused Sky Sports team.
After the fight the McDermott’s team was annoyed and many say rightly so. The judge scored the bout 6 rounds in the favour of Fury. The stats and the Sky pundits’ scorecards (and probably many more in the arena and watching at home) had it the other way round.
Investigation
So what happened on this night? What exactly did Terry O Connor see that pretty much no one else (except maybe Tyson, his team, friends and family) saw? And what exactly will be done about this shocking result? Frank Maloney, John McDermott’s promoter, said afterwards that the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBoC) must look into this, and he said the referee Terry O Connor was a ‘disgrace to British boxing’.
While Frank was clearly upset, and he acknowledged he would probably get in trouble for his outburst, he does have a valid point. Boxing over the years has witnessed some controversial moments and indeed some very bad decisions made by referees and judges. It is after all, a matter of opinion of the judge’s behalf. But there are countries with reputations of giving dodgy results in favour of the home fighter.
Friday night’s decision saw two domestic fighters now at opposite ends of the spectrum. Tyson Fury remains an unbeaten prospect, but who will also come under pressure and scrutiny with his display. John McDermott suffered a third successive, and controversial defeat potentially damaging his future credentials.
How can these injustices be stopped in our noble sport? In recent months we have seen a number of high profile sporting controversies and over the years more and more sports including technology to aid with the decision to be made sticking to the rules. In tennis there is hawk-eye to question a line judges’ call, in rugby league they have a video referee in case the game officials cannot determine if a try should be given. Even in snooker they use monitors to make sure they replace balls in the exact right position if a shot is to be replayed. Football is looking into using goal line technology to see if the ball passes behind the line. Is it about time boxing followed suit?
Of course boxing is much different to other sports, and there has historically always been some political issues involved in the sport. While many say corruption has been eradicated, is it unrealistic to think that Terry O Connor may have been under some pressure to keep Fury’s unbeaten streak in tact. After all, a loss on Friday could have de-railed his ambitions and eliminated the hope of Britain gaining another world champion. But making a nice guy like John McDermott a scapegoat is just unfair.
Two things arise from this article. One is about what the BBBoC are going to do about it, and the other is about what role technology can play.
In recent months we have seen the athletics committee get tough on an athlete due to complication of their gender, we have seen Arsenal striker Eduardo banned from playing 2 football matches for diving, Chelsea banned from signing any players until 20011, and in F1 there is an investigation into a deliberate crash from the 2008 season to allow Fernando Alonso to win the race.
Technology
Decisions like the one on Friday night need to be looked into and results overturned or dismissed altogether. Another loss on some poor chaps record can potentially make them look less attractive an opponent and thus losing them money in future. Furthermore the official should be dealt with in an appropriate way also. Football officials are made to officiate in lower leagues if they make a bad decision, and rightly so.
We could also look into how and why the bad decisions in boxing are able to be made in the first place. Boxing currently has technology whereby adds up the punches made by each fighter and calculates into numbers and percentages the variations of punches, if they landed, if they were power shots. Yet it is still not used to determine any kind of outcome or aid in judgement. Of course this system is operated by individuals who select the shot as it happens. But how do they know if a shot actually landed, and sometimes they might miss a shit here and there
Surely if boxing was to look at taking technology into the sport we could gain some better results, and less controversial ones. If we took a technology like hawk-eye which can judge exactly whether or not punches landed and link these to compu-box we get a reliable and accurate set of statistics. Of course statistics don’t always tell the story of a fight, and accuracy doesn’t always win the decision, but it would be a step in the right direction at least.
Furthermore, time and again we see head clashes occur without the referee realising and a fight is allowed to go on. A hawk-eye feature would actually provide evidence a head clash did in fact occur and the relevant decision can be made.
There are of course some issues still with using technology. Things like hawk-eye need to be specially set up at the arena and there could be all sorts of problems and issues. But technology and maybe a different way of officiating could be devised or just thought about as a means to try to cut out bad decisions such as the one on Friday night.
Maybe not everyone will favour this proposal, some people will like the controversy that bad decision bring, and the purists out there will just want things to always be the same. But as other sports get tough on the participants and incorporate more and more technology, should boxing be looking to move along with the times also?
Have your say!