StewartR
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Did anyone watch the fight last night? Crikey, I feel sorry for people who paid money for that. £24.95 on Sky Box Office? Wow. It was so dull, I bailed out after 9 rounds. You know the kind of football match which has nil-nil written all over it, nobody looks like scoring, and the crowds are streaming for the exits with 15 minutes to go? It was like that.
It's hard to know exactly how much each man earned last night, because there are so many different revenue streams (prize purse, TV income, sponsorship etc). But most estimates have Joshua earning £15-20 million and Parker maybe half to 2/3rds of that. Its not for me to say whether they "earned" that. There's so much hype around Joshua at the moment, he's guaranteed a massive payday to fight Wilder. But still, in any other situation, you'd have to ask whether performances like this will continue to pull in the big money. I imagine a fair number of the people who paid £24.95 to watch this might not be so keen on repeating the experience.
The fight also highlighted to me how arbitrary and stupid the scoring system is. In top-level amateur boxing, such as at the Olympics, the judges log points in real time when they see a boxer connect with a punch. That seems reasonable. But here, with such huge sums at stake, they just award each round with no transparency into their decision processes, and sometimes (as last night) the result is just embarrassing.
The official judges scored it 118-110, 118-110, and 119-109. That means two of them thought Joshua won 10 of the 12 rounds, and the third thought Joshua won 11 rounds. That's frankly ridiculous. The Showtime channel's correspondent had it all square after 7 rounds, and Joshua leading 4½—3½ after 8 rounds. That seemed reasonable to me. The Guardian correspondent had it all square after 8 rounds, Parker winning the 9th, then Joshua winning the last 3 to scrape home 115-113. That sounds reasonable too. But 118-110? Ridiculous.
Imagine if F1 races or the UEFA Champions League or the Super Bowl were decided on such an arbitrary basis. So why does the boxing community put up with it?
It's hard to know exactly how much each man earned last night, because there are so many different revenue streams (prize purse, TV income, sponsorship etc). But most estimates have Joshua earning £15-20 million and Parker maybe half to 2/3rds of that. Its not for me to say whether they "earned" that. There's so much hype around Joshua at the moment, he's guaranteed a massive payday to fight Wilder. But still, in any other situation, you'd have to ask whether performances like this will continue to pull in the big money. I imagine a fair number of the people who paid £24.95 to watch this might not be so keen on repeating the experience.
The fight also highlighted to me how arbitrary and stupid the scoring system is. In top-level amateur boxing, such as at the Olympics, the judges log points in real time when they see a boxer connect with a punch. That seems reasonable. But here, with such huge sums at stake, they just award each round with no transparency into their decision processes, and sometimes (as last night) the result is just embarrassing.
The official judges scored it 118-110, 118-110, and 119-109. That means two of them thought Joshua won 10 of the 12 rounds, and the third thought Joshua won 11 rounds. That's frankly ridiculous. The Showtime channel's correspondent had it all square after 7 rounds, and Joshua leading 4½—3½ after 8 rounds. That seemed reasonable to me. The Guardian correspondent had it all square after 8 rounds, Parker winning the 9th, then Joshua winning the last 3 to scrape home 115-113. That sounds reasonable too. But 118-110? Ridiculous.
Imagine if F1 races or the UEFA Champions League or the Super Bowl were decided on such an arbitrary basis. So why does the boxing community put up with it?
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