19 February 2024 , 15:33
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Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk's undisputed heavyweight world title fight could be scored by six judges instead of three.
Fury was due to fight Usyk this past weekend in Saudi Arabia but pulled out of the mega-fight after being cut over his right eye in sparring. The undisputed clash has been rescheduled for May 18 and Saudi royal advisor Turki Alalsheikh has promised to fine Fury or Usyk a huge £10million if they can't make the new date.
WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman is concerned about the possibility of a bad scorecard ruining the historic fight, in which the first undisputed heavyweight champion will be crowned since 1999. Sulaiman thinks that introducing five or six judges for the fight can hopefully avoid any judging controversies.
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"That is my recommendation. We will see," he told Sky Sports. "Boxing is a sport in which change is very difficult to get. We're purists, traditionalists, we don't want changes. I will continue to make the proposal. Some like the idea, some of the people in the decision-making process. We will see.
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"Anybody can have a bad night. If you have one judge have a bad night and the two others get it correct, you still save the fight. You have two judges with a difficult fight and then one round can shift the whole result. If you have more officials then the possibility of a wrong score goes to a minimum. That's the only intention to make sure there's no controversy.
"We had proposed to use five judges or six judges. However that was not considered. It did not happen. I would still recommend. We do have a remote scoring system which is used for training and evaluating ring officials from all over the world. They score live in the WBC system that we developed.
"We have found through fights done in this system that the more officials that score a fight, the less possibility of a wrong decision." Sulaiman admitted his idea of extra judges is still in a foundation phase, but is hopeful that video replay will be used for the undisputed fight after previously utising it for Fury's fight with Francis Ngannou.
"The initial idea was to put together specific guidelines of the usage of instant replay and we're in that process. So we're going to work with the producers of the feed to see what equipment and what communications are needed, what the review panel will be, just go into details," he added.
"The idea of having the possibility of reviewing a major controversial happening inside the ring, to make the right decision, the right call at the time is basically it. To have the absolute certainty that there will not be a controversy. That in a fight of this magnitude would be absolutely unacceptable."