The long-awaited Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk world heavyweight title unification match could make boxing history for some surprising reasons if the WBC (World Boxing Council) has anything to about it.
The sanctioning body’s president Mauricio Sulaiman has revealed his revolutionary plans for the superfight, which has been delayed from February 17 to May 18 after ‘The Gypsy King’ – the reigning WBC champion – cut his eye in sparring.
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Sulaiman believes that doubling the number of judges scoring the fight from three to ‘five or six’ would lessen the chance of a controversial decision.
Remember what happened back in 1999, when most experts believed Lennox Lewis had easily defeated Evander Holyfield in their first match for all the heavyweight marbles at Madison Square Garden?
Instead it was declared a draw and Lennox waited another eight months before becoming undisputed king on an unforgettable night in Las Vegas.
Sulaiman revealed his plans to Sky Sports, and is now waiting to see if they will be adopted. There are three other recognised world titles on the line remember – with Usyk holding the IBF, WBA and WBO belts.
Sulaiman wants MORE judges
“That is my recommendation. We will see. 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.
“We had proposed to use five judges, or six judges. However that was not considered. It did not happen. I would still recommend [it].
“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,” he explained. “We have found through fights done in this system that the more officials that score a fight, the less possibility of a wrong decision.
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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. But if you have more officials then the possibility of a wrong score goes to a minimum. But we will see. That’s the only intention to make sure there’s no controversy..
While Sulaiman clearly admits his plan for increasing the judges may not happen in time for May 18, he does though believe video replays could be utilised for the massive showdow.
“I believe it will happen, now that the fight has been postponed until May 18, three months from now, we will look into it. 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.”
