37!

Sorry, I didn't mean to inject politics into this thread.

There it is!

I took one down, passed it around, now there are 97 talking points on the wall.

Which decision is that? The split decision in favor of Bradley? Or Arums decision to fix the fight in the first place?

All bad boxing decisions are attributed to being fixed. In Pacqiao-Bradley, it's kind of funny, because before the fight, people were expecting that if the fight was somewhat close but in favor of Bradley, then he would have no chance, because it would be fixed for Pacquiao. But when Pacquiao loses, now the fight is fixed for Bradley. The loss destroys what would have easily been the biggest money fight on the horizon, Pacquiao-Mayweather, which was still a possibility, and even if the Mayweather fight never happened, Pacquiao could have made as much or more money by continuing his win streak and fighting somebody new. If there was money to be made in Pacqiao LOSING a fight, it would have been Pacquiao-Marquez III; all of the fights in that trilogy were competitive and more editing and entertaining than Pacqiao-Bradley, and Marquez's use Mexican fan base would have generated much more money in a rematch than Pacqiao-Bradley II.

The truth is almost certainly much more mundane, and it follows numerous other bad decisions, most recently Pacquiao-Marquez III and Paul Williams - Erislandy Lara: there is a bias in favor of the busier fighter. The judges, in fixed position at ringside, can't see that many of them are missing. Bradley threw more more punches, and it's easy to assume (especially with the crowd reacting to every flurry, accurate or not) that they're landing. From the luxury of viewing multiple-camera shoots close up, we know that Pacquiao landed more, but that can be harder to see at ringside, even for professional judges. There's a very clear bias in favor of the guy who throws more punches, and it's tracked most of the major public upsets in recent history.

Has there ever been a suggestion that the judges be allowed to use the video as an aid to their decision-making? It seems to be the trend in sports, and, off the top of my (admittedly ignorant) head, I cannot see a downside (other than, perhaps, delaying the decision a few minutes whilst (for Bob) they review the footage).

It doesn't help apperances that both fighters are under the Top Rank umbrella and that Bradley was tweeting posters for the rematch on May 29th. Which I guess was some sort of joke, but in retrospect looks terrible. Considering the fight practically "demands" a rematch.

http://twitter.com/Timbradleyjr/status/2....../photo/1

But really. Win, lose, whatever. The only ones who lost were the fans and boxing quit caring about thier fans a long, long, time ago.

I think boxing needs some kind of overhaul if it wants to get back to it's glory days.
I can't say everything that should be done because I'm not the expert, but something's been weird for a while.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think boxing will ever die, but it feels like it's been in a bit of a decline.
I may be wrong, there could be math involved and I'm not interested in that.
Maybe everything is hunky-dorothy and I'm misreading the vibe of the room.

Speaking of boxing I saw that Teofilo Stevenson died yesterday.

Ahhhhhh man, I missed that. That's too bad. I'd have loved to see him as a pro in his prime, especially with it being such a great era for heavyweights.

A Stevenson-Ali bout would have been epic.