The Olympic boxing rounds are underway, and no one is quite sure what is going on with the scoring. British and Ukrainian judges have launched formal protests in the way the officials ’seem’ to favoring the local fighters.
“I knew they were going to give him everything he wanted,” said Murray, who trailed 4-0 after the first two minutes. “I’ve been watching the scoring here the first four days, and I knew it was bad, so I was expecting it. … I think they were giving him a score for anything, and I had to work to get all of my points.”
British coach Terry Edwards echoed his fighter’s complaints, calling the scores “absolutely stupid.”
“The judges took it away from him,” Edwards said of the early rounds, when the score deficit forced Murray to change his style. “I thought they were very generous to the Chinese. You expect a slight bias, but you come to the Olympic Games and expect a level playing field.
Because Olympic / Amateur boxing utilized points scored in somewhat random and odd ways (many boxing fanatics cannot even understand it at times) the potential for officials to have far too much of a say in the outcome of a match is always a possibility.
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