The 10th Round, An Overview, or, Why Compubox is Useless

Did this punch land?

*****

The Cruelest Sport decided to watch the 10th round of the Amir Khan-Marcos Maidana bout four times, in slow motion, last night in an effort to analyze what appeared to be an obvious mistake that no one has pointed out yet.

Before getting to that, however, some fascinating things occurred during those three dramatic minutes.

Here are a few examples:

Khan did not attempt to throw a punch for at least one minute and thirty seconds, according to the HBO clock. He did, however, shove or push Maidana away from him no less than four times.

With about 20 seconds left in the round, a woozy Khan actually appeared to be talking to himself–even frowning–as Maidana advanced to inflict more punishment. Khan also smiled once as he was in full retreat.

Despite promoting both fighters, Oscar De La Hoya was at ringside looking particularly worried as Khan was having his neurons scrambled. Fighters might want to keep that kind of thing in mind before they sign with a promoter who plays favorites–as Shane Mosley would probably tell you–among its own roster.

It was also interesting to see just how much Joe Cortez interposed himself on the action. Throwing himself into the fray like a stage diver at a Cro-Mags show circa 1986, Cortez even seemed to take a right to the jaw from Maidana at one point. Later, Khan stumbled forward, into Maidana, and Cortez tried to grab him from behind and prop him up. He failed and instead jumped between Maidana and Khan. There is no telling what would have happened there—Khan might have stumbled to safety, Maidana might have landed some more clubbing shots, a clinch might have ensued—but Cortez decided, inexplicably, to change the course of events.

But what really kicked off this Zapruder-like analysis was the Compubox graphic flashed on the screen between rounds. Incredibly, it claimed that Maidana landed only 23 power punches in the round. This figure is so absurd that even Pierre Benoist might have questioned it. Later, the final Compubox stats credited Maidana with landing only 26 punches for the entire 10th round. This conclusion is as arbitrary as a roulette wheel, and its final posting as a “statistic” is preposterous. Obviously, Compubox is not a subsidiary of the Elias Sports Bureau.

Four slow motion replays of the entire round, along with careful tabulation on the back of a brown paper bag, showed that Maidana landed well over 40 punches from the time he first staggered Khan with a sonic right hand to the sound of the closing bell. Nearly all of these shots appeared to be clean punches, but just to be on the safe side, this study disqualified blows that might have been partially blocked or debatable for other reasons. Then the final number was rounded down to 40 for algorithmic purposes. In the end, Compubox failed to credit Maidana with over 50 percent of the total number of blows he actually landed.

It is probably no easy task to judge clean punches from ringside; this is not the point. Nor is this meant to be rundown of Compubox tabulators. The point is that these tallies are officially endorsed and often taken as real indicators of what has occurred during a fight. They are not. What they are, ultimately, is another accepted fugazi aspect of boxing. No other pursuit in America, except, perhaps, the government, thrives as much on incompetence as does boxing–writers who cannot write, judges who cannot judge, referees who cannot referee, champions who are not champions, promoters who do not promote, and now counters who cannot count.

You are better off believing in phrenology or in the orgone theory of Wilhelm Reich than in Compubox. Indeed, phrenology charts are at least worth a good chuckle. False statistics are not nearly as funny.

*****

Follow The Cruelest Sport on Twitter & Facebook and follow a website that is 100% incendiary, harsh, acerbic, snarky, enraged, negative, critical, whatever.