Dose Boxing need a 4th Judge?

Two weeks ago on the 18th May Adonis Stevenson and Badou Jack went toe to toe in their much anticipated fight. Although the fight itself will without question go down as a classic the result however left many boxing fans feeling flat as it was scored a draw. This has raised the question does boxing need a 4th judge?

There’s no question that the fight between these two warriors was very close with Stevenson making the brighter start and Jack coming on strong in the middle rounds at the final bell the judges scored it 113-115 and 114-114 on the other two. I scored the fight 115-113 in favour of Jack, and my card below will show how I scored each round.

As you can see every round was close and difficult to score I just felt that throughout the fight Jack landed the cleaner and better quality punches despite the fact that the fight kept swinging one way than the other.

If boxing where to adopt a 4th judge it would then eliminate the possibility of a fight ending in a draw and hopefully remove some a the controversy from our sport surely that can only be a good thing. I’m not talking about changing the judging system completely there would still be 3 judges at ringside scoring the fight using the 10 point must system as always, the 4th judges scorecard would only be used if the 3 judges can not pick a winner, if this system where to be use it would not be the first time The World Boxing Super Series uses such a system in there fights, now that is because it is a tournament so there has to be a winner. However I believe that this system would work well for all boxing matches.

Now at this point I know what you’re thinking if we take away the possibility of a draw and reduce the amount of controversy then we will lose some of the excitement of the sport because there would be less rematch’s, I don’t believe that would happen because if the 4th judges card was use to decide the result of a fight then there would be no need for a rematch. On the other hand I think that if the 4th scorecard was used the likely hood is that there would still be a rematch just as if the fight had ended in a draw because both fighters will still want to prove that they can beat the other without the use of the 4th scorecard, because a fighter will still want to prove that they are the best.

I understand that this is a controversial proposal that will no doubt divide the whole boxing world. I also know that this is not the first time I have written a post on judging check out How Judges Score fights. However I always love to hear what you guys think so please comment below is a 4th judge a good idea?