Where was the actual controversy in the Golovkin/Alvarez scoring?

The 118-110 scorecard by Adelaide Byrd on behalf of Canelo Alvarez has circulated throughout the Internet and the media as an egregious disaster, but does she deserve as much controversy as she has received?

Perhaps, but another scorecard issue was overlooked….

Having watched the fight twice and scoring it once, I can safely tell you that this was a difficult fight to score.  Those who suggest otherwise are either clueless or biased toward one of the fighters.  I like to think that I am not clueless and objectivity is my forte, so I can say these particularly unkind words.

Scoring the Definitive Rounds

In this scorer’s view, only 4 of the 12 rounds were definitive.

Alvarez – 2, 3
Golovkin – 6, 7*

*It is my belief that round 7 was the most dominant round in the fight

Scoring the Close Rounds

I believe 7 of the 12 rounds were close.  I managed to find a winner in these rounds, but I could see an argument against my findings.

Alvarez – 10, 11, 12
Golovkin – 4, 5, 8, 9

The Swing Round

The first round, as is usually the case, I scored for Alvarez.  This was basically a 50/50 round.

My Summary

Given that Golovkin had the most dominant round and the fact that one of the rounds I gave Canelo (1st) was basically a 50/50 type of round, the fight had a 55/45 feeling in favor of Golovkin.  In terms of rounds, I had it even (114-114).

The issue with scoring this fight is that in many rounds, you were forced to decide between Golovkin’s ring generalship and Alvarez’s more attractive power punching.  I think many people fell into the trap of scoring rounds for Golovkin just because he appeared to be the bigger man, lumbering around stalking Alvarez.  On the whole, Alvarez landed 4 more power punches and at a significantly higher percentage (42% vs. 32%). He also landed a higher percentage overall.

The Controversy

The official scorecards were as follows:

118-110 for Alvarez (Byrd)
115-113 for Golovkin (Moretti)
114-114 (Trella)

The Trella scorecard is one that should be questioned just as much, if not more than the Byrd card.

What most people are not talking about, are the rounds that were scored unanimously in this fight.

Alvarez – 1, 2, 10, 11, 12
Golovkin – 4

No typos there.  Golovkin received only one unanimous round, while Alvarez received five.

However, the round you do not see here, is round 7, the most dominant round for Golovkin.  A round in which Golovkin threw 20 more punches than Alvarez and one where Alvarez only landed 4 power punches the entire round.

Byrd managed to score this round correctly, as did Moretti.  Trella did not.

In my own scoring, you could actually arrive at a 118-110 for Alvarez if you gave him every single close round.  This is not realistic, but more likely than winning the lottery.  How Trella could’ve screwed up the most dominant round in the fight — I just don’t know.

It seems that Byrd is not inept… it seems that she was biased, while Trella is really to blame for the actual outcome.  My card was exactly the same as Moretti’s, except for round 3.