Here come the judges

By Tim Smith: Another Saturday night. Another bad decision. So what's new with boxing?That's the problem. There is nothing new with boxing. The age old problem of the judges looking at a different fight than the fans occurred again when Vernon Forrest and Ike Quartey fought at The Theater at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. This was Exhibit A as to why open scoring wouldn't work. Based on the reaction from the crowd after the fight there would have been a riot during the match if they knew how the judges were scoring the match.Before I go on, let me say that I have seen worst decisions by worst judges. It was a bad decision, but it does not rise to the level of a robbery perpetrated by incompetent judges. This was no Lewis-Holyfield I. This was a very close fight. Two of the judges, Melvina Lathan and Steve Weisfeld - two of the better judges working professionally today - scored it 95-94 for Forrest. I scored it 95-94 for Quartey. Forrest never led on my scorecard, and I suspect that was the case for most of the ringside media that had Quartey winning. Forrest led on Lathan's card from the seventh round on. She had the fight even (67-67) after six. Weisfeld had Forrest leading after six rounds.The main difference in my scorecard than Weisfeld and Lathan's scorecards is that I gave Quartey the fifth round and they scored it for Forrest. All three judges, as did I, scored the ninth round for Forrest with the one-point deduction for the low blow.A friend who went to the fight said that people behind him started shouting, "Run Forrest. Run!'' when got on his bicycle in the sixth round. Perhaps Forrest's retreat, ala Oscar De La Hoya against Felix Trinidad late, greatly influenced the crowd. Whatever the case, Forrest won and the fans and Quartey and his camp feel cheated.Filing a protest won't do Quartey any good. Ron Scott Stevens, the chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, said from first glance there was nothing in the fight to make him think there was anything wrong with the decision. The most recent decision overturned by the New York commission occurred in 2001 when the match between James Leija and Hector Camacho, Jr. was ruled a no-contest after a review by the commission. Camacho was originally given a decision after the fight was stopped on a headbutt. The commission ruled that the bell had not sounded to start the fifth round, so they should not have gone to the scorecards, which had Camacho ahead at the time of the stoppage. It was an easy way out of a difficult situation because someone in Camacho's corner allegedly told him that he should quit because he was ahead on the scorecards.There are bad decisions every week in boxing. They just aren't publicized because every bad decision does not play out on HBO, Showtime or ESPN. The way that judges are selected and the way subjective criteria for judging fights will always lead to questionable decisions. What is ring generalship? What is effective aggressiveness? It's all in the eye of the beholder. Some people don't think a fighter can win a round going backwards. Some people can't pick up on punches that are caught on the glove. Some people think body shots are not equal to those thrown to the head.My solution from the "I'm Running the World Department'': Judges should go through rigorous training to come up with some uniformity in how the criteria are interpreted. The training should be conducted by a national commission, not by sanctioning organizations or state commissions. That commission should rank all the judges based on their performances in scoring fights. And just like the officials in other sports, only those judges with the highest ratings can work high profile matches and championship fights.Who should rate the judges? That part is a little more difficult. But I'm sure a panel of retired referees and judges and state commission officials could be put together to rate and rank judges. I still find it interesting (and disconcerting) that sanctioning organizations and promoters have input on judges. That would end under my plan.The good news for Quartey is that he didn't suffer any ill effects from the loss other than another "L'' on his record. But he fought well enough to keep himself in the junior middleweight title mix. He and his family won't go starving for bread. HBO will certainly have him back. DiBella is talking about putting him on the undercard Jermain Taylor's show from Little Rock, Arkansas on Dec. 9.ECETERAMaybe the real outrage of the night wasn't what happened at the conclusion of the Forrest-Quartey fight. Maybe the fans should have been just as indignant at the fact that Carl Daniels was lined up for a match against Jaidon Codrington and Roberto Valenzuela was tabbed for Andre Berto. Daniels entered the fight on a five-match losing streak, while Valenzuela had fought three times in seven weeks, losing two (one by KO) and winning one when his opponent quit in the second round. I understand the difficulties with getting matches for Berto and I understand the fragility of Codrington's psyche. But this was not a shining moment for DiBella Entertainment and the NYSAC...Did you fill out your bracket for Gary Shaw's 168-pound (championship?) tournament? I'm out already. Too many first round upsets. But you gotta like Duke (Tony Hanshaw)...Gotta love the feud going on between Promoter Bob Arum and HBO. He is taking Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito, his two brightest stars, to Showtime for matches against the Emmanuel and Joshua Clottey in December. This feud started when HBO and Arum put on competing pay per view shows on June 10. The real loser in all this is Cotto, whom I thought Arum was grooming for major pay per view stardom. No disrespect to Showtime, but they can't make Cotto a pay per view star. Unless Arum can use his OLN deal to make his boxing cards as big as HBO's "Championship Boxing'' series, Cotto will be getting about as much exposure as the dark side of the moon. You gotta figure Arum will eventually take Cotto back to HBO when he calms down. In the meantime as far as Cotto and Showtime is concerned, Showtime execs will be humming this line from the old Bill Wither's song: "If it feels this good being used, you can keep on using me until you use me up.''