Quote Originally Posted by killersheep
Quote Originally Posted by Gonzo
Clean punching should be weighed with the most possible points. It is by far the most important aspect of judging. The truth is clean punching accounts for probably at least 90% of a score. It should at least. Consider that the cleaner puncher is taking the defensive portion because obviously he's getting hit less than his opponent. And because he is the cleaner puncher he's obviously the man holding ring generalship and is really controlling the action of the fight. The idea is to hit and not get hit. Only in cases that you cannot determine a clear winner based on clean punching should you go to the next 3 criteria and many have a different opinion of what ring generalship really is and how much it should factor into a score. Effective aggression as well can be misinterpreted as simply the man moving forward or the man throwing a lot of punches. There's no need to score missed or blocked punches. We should only be looking at what is actually landing. Splitting the 4 criteria into points could only cause further mayhem among judges as everybody will have a different opinion on their value. The one thing that cannot be denied is that clean and effective punching should win the round.
I don't think that everyone agrees that cleaner punching wins rounds.
Take for example Barrera vs. Morales round 5
Morales landed cleaner punches and more of them
Barrera landed the more powerful punches
Barrera won that round in many peoples eyes.

A lot of judges will give more weight to someone that is landing more effective punches rather than the more skilled volume shots.

as it stands now all 4 criterion are supposed to have equal weight.
Effective Aggression
Clean Punching
Defense
Ring Generalship

As to what any individual judge thinks is entirely subjective. Any judge may weigh any of the four criterion as more important than the others.
I said clean and effective punching. Maybe I should have elaborated that in the beginning rather than the end of my original post. Anyways, 10 of my feather jabs may not be worth 1 big bomb by you. That's why we use judges because a computer can't determine the value of my 10 jabs to your 1 bomb. Something that CompuBox cannot determine either.

The point I'm trying to get at is that every single one of those criterion relies on one man essentially being the cleaner puncher. Even defense. By you being the cleaner puncher, you are able to put defense on your side. Now it may not be so glaring that I say, "he won that round on defense," but I can say that you certainly got hit less than your opponent and that essentially makes your defense better than your opponent. Have you ever seen a guy win a round without throwing a punch? Okay, maybe Willie Pep, but even that is hotly disputed. Would you score a round for a guy who didn't throw a single punch? I know I would be very hard pressed to. Because what that means is that if, Pep for example, didn't throw a single punch that his opponent didn't get hit either. That's another debate altogether but hopefully you can see my point.

The Barrera-Morales round that you've used is one of those that could legitimately go either way. In most cases, the cleaner puncher will be the more effective puncher. That is not a written rule. That's just common judging experience. From time to time you will find opponent A landing more punches but opponent B's punches were more effective.

The 4 criterion certainly should not be weighted equally. Clean and effective punching is head and shoulders more important than anything else you can do inside a ring and really play a huge factor in the other 3.