Quote Originally Posted by TitoFan View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Spicoli View Post
For all of its spaghetti at the wall ratings, boxrec has a pretty extensive listing of judges and refs from first fight worked to very last. Not sure if it rates them similar to fighters but it's interesting to sort thru events worked..how many times working same fighter, venue etc and see some patterns. I've always found it odd that the same officials can work in different capacities. One card the judge and others some work as a ref maybe. Yet they are cloaked as a judge and with some refs you would swear it was them who we're supposed to focus on. Some refs loooove the camera (looking at you Cole, Cortez and Jack Reiss). I've said it before and yet again...all judges should be introduced ring center exactly as the refs are. Put a face on them. HBO came close with listing judges and 'big' fights worked. You're a professional, if the scrutiny gets to you may be time to do something else.


BoxRec has quite the extensive database. But no ranking system for judges that I could find. Fighters get ranked ad nauseum. If I had a dollar for every p4p list out there... etc, etc. Refs may or may not get ranked... but they're front and center in every barroom discussion about boxing. Yet judges work in relative anonymity. Don't screw up too badly... collect your check... and go home. Kind of an odd setup, given the criticality of their work.

These guys/gals decide anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of fights (depending on whose stats you believe); and yet there is little to no accountability. Fans (and some of the media) bitch and moan at particularly bad scoring cards... then the din predictably dies down in a few days or weeks. Ho-hum. Another day at the office. Any other profession... you get thrown out on your ass if you're consistently incompetent or biased.
As with most things it seems to boil down to the local State commissions per the training, certification and assignment for judges. Ideally a judge, fighters, refs etc start in amateur program to simply garner experience. I may be wrong but local commissions do the assigning but that can be accurate because how often do we here of promoters and even fighters "objecting" and things get moved around other officials get brought in. But a huge problem is also..how many States don't even have commissions . Very rarely are there any public repercussions for shitty scores. Last year there was a ray of hope in what should be the norm when one of the judges in the Mykal Fox v Mastre robbery was actually suspended for 6 months. But really it was for her racist tweets they found, fans, when they dug into her history. Not so much for the asinine score she handed in. I dunno man, as with many things in the gloriously brave but assbackwards sport it's left to the fans to churn the outrage when bad calls are made. A "robbery" card may end the night for a judge..but it follows and dictates the literal livelihood of a fighter when the lights go dim and the camera turn off. Same with refs. I remember years ago I started keeping a run of "shit judges" as a sig at the bottom of my profile. It helped that I wasn't working much at the time because that took time. But man, it became literally too long just 6 months into keeping track and ran out of room. Individually we can all track bad judges. Think of a robbery..a genuine robbery..and go thru their history. Really is revealing what you come across. It's also on fans to stop yelling ROBBERY at every competitive close call result. You see more and more of it now. Sure if we dig around there are more than a few shitty judge threads we're sitting on.