Lee Maloney clarifies the scoring on Matthews-Simpson for BBN by Terry Dooley Mar 17th 2007

Derry Matthews' manager Lee Maloney took the initiative of offering an explanation for the controversy surrounding the scorecards in his fighters win over John Simpson last Saturday night. Maloney yesterday contributed posts to a British Boxing forum to offer his take on the fight. Having dealt with Maloney before, BBN was surprised to see that the unassuming manager from Liverpool had decided to post his explanation on the popular forum. It was an unusual step and BBN phoned Lee to clarify the post as well as asking a few preliminary questions about the fight ahead of a forthcoming BBN interview with Derry himself. Controversy raged over not so much over the justice the scoring itself as much as the unjust circumstance of cards being turned in that did not, even at first glance, tally with the point deductions made in the fight. The two cards of 118-112 and 117-110 (given the information provided today naming and shaming the judges would be wrong and unfair, they seem to be the victims of a tallying mistake) for Derry caused a massive furore about the legality of the scores turned in and this, plus accusations of constant fouling by Derry, marred the Matthews win. Derry won the fight by a more realistic tally of 113-111 on the other card and 113-112 on my unofficial card. If the cards had read how they should have read the nature of the scoring would have taken on a different talking point, instead of accusations of tomfoolery in the judging we would be merely having yet another debate about the relativity of scoring. The fight itself was a torrid one. Simpson was so brave as he fought through a haze of blood caused by an accidental clash of heads in round six, this cut was high on the head but the blood had only one place to run and that was into Simpson's face. Matthews suffered himself as a right hand put him down for a count in the first; it was not a massively discombobulating punch but the touchdown, coupled with good work by Simpson made it a clear 10-8 round. Hitting around the back of the head caused Matthews to lose points in round six and nine. This was a crucial factor on many individual cards yet the men applying the rules to the scoring post-fight forgot to make sure that these deductions were applied. At this point BBN passes the floor over to Maloney as he explains how and why the judging controversy occurred: Lee Maloney: “Many people have made the correct observation that Matthews received 118 points and 117 points on two of the cards and are quite right to have concerns about this. "Due to the deductions by referee Mickey Vann it would have been near impossible for Matthews to amass that total. I am in the fortunate position in that I have had the official explanation of what has happened and am happy to share it with you. The 3 judges cards were 118-112, 117-111 and 113-111. "I can reveal that the deductions from Derry for fouling indicated by Mickey Vann were only deducted by the WBU from one of the three cards (113-111). "As Matthews' co-manager I was delighted that he had retained his title and was perfectly satisfied that he had done so but was embarrassed at the wide margin of the scores on two of the cards. Neither myself (nor) any of the team could understand how we had won by such a wide margin. "I telephoned the relevant officials on Monday to ask how the fight had been scored and I was informed of the mishap that had taken place in the scoring. "The situation is that the judges are to score the rounds exactly as they see it (i.e. effective punches landing on the target area etc). Therefore if Boxer A outboxes Boxer B in a particular round but commits a foul and is deducted a point, the judges scores will still be written as 10-9 in favour of boxer A. The referee (although indicating to all four sides of the ring) is in fact informing the steward in charge of the deductions who makes a note of it in the column for penalties. "At the end of the fight, the steward will tally the scorecards giving him the judge's totals and will then subtract the number of deducted points accordingly. This was only applied to one of the cards on Saturday (113-111). I can't tell you why this happened; I can only confirm to you that this IS what happened." [WBU Rules clarify this. Rule Three (no sub-divisions = a big help) clearly states that: ‘The scorecards will be picked up after the end of each round and tallied by the WBU commissioner. The three ringside WBU judges only score the fight according to what they see. Any points to be taken away will be made by the WBU referee, who will inform the ringside WBU Fight Commissioner who will mark the master score sheet accordingly.'] "If you subtract the extra point for the knockdown in round one, the judges' cards should have read 115-112, 114-111 and 113-111 (I have not seen the scorecards yet but I am presuming that Simpson would have been awarded round one by a 10-8 margin). "Even the scoring of round one is not cut and dried as the round was pretty even apart from the knockdown and may only have been scored 10-9 in John's favour as it is not compulsory to award a KD round 10-8. "For what it's worth my own opinion is that the knockdown was a legitimate one and I thought John won the round anyway which is why I allude to it as a 10-8 round to Simpson. "I believe the judges got this one about right in terms of rounds won and lost. I have watched the fight on DVD several times and despite my obvious allegiance to Derry I believe I can still score the fight objectively (I did this at first because I couldn't understand the scores that were read out). "My own tally was 116 -112 in favour of Derry which, with the 2 points deducted, still had Mathews in front 114-112. "I gave John Simpson the first round 10-8, round three 10-9 and round nine 10-9. On the night I had it marginally closer but after analysis I believe that by and large Derry won pretty much everything else. I believe the verdict was right but I know for a fact the scoring was wrong. "I will use round six as an example. I thought Matthews won the round and I did a punch stat by watching the round half a dozen times to confirm my results. "In round six John landed two jabs, one very good right hand (after the cuts stoppage) and two very good body shots in combination early in the round. By comparison Derry landed seven good jabs three good right crosses one very good body punch and several other punches that although landing were not that effective. "The round was a 10-9 round to Matthews all the way and I am presuming that the judges saw it that way. The referee deducted a point from Matthews in this round for a foul however so this would have been taken off at the final scores tally. "Duke McKenzie awarded the round 10-8 to Simpson on his card, I believe (he did this) because he mistakenly believed this is what happens when a fighter is called for fouling. "Even on Duke's card, had this round been scored correctly (effectively 9-9), that would have been one extra point to Mathews and one point off Simpson which would have seen Matthews retain his title. "Matthews landed by far the more punches from round four onwards and despite John's heroic efforts in pressing Derry he rarely found the target to register the scoring punch (I watched the fight several times to satisfy myself of this). We all agreed however that the wrong scores being given out had left many people with raised eyebrows and the suspicion that something untoward had occurred. I hope that this explanation finally puts to rest the suspicion surrounding the verdict in this fight. "May I end this by saying what true gentleman John Simpson and Danny Lee are. I had the pleasure to speak to them both this weekend and they are a credit to the sport. Thank you for reading this.” BBN asked Lee about another contentious aspect of this fight, Derry was accused of fouling a lot and doing so maliciously, did Lee think this also prompted a lot of the criticism and was it deserved? LM: “We both know that Derry did a few naughty things and fouled a few times but he is not a dirty fighter. It was a tough fight but Derry had a bad day at the office simple as that. Ten times out of ten he would do a better job in this fight, if he fought the way he did against Foster it would have been a stoppage result. "Derry fouled a few times but to call him ‘Dirty' Derry is ridiculous. Derry fought the wrong fight, on the outside it would be a different fight but he got caught-up in the fight and showed that he can fight that type of fight and has bottle for the fight. We don't want him having wars but he is a survivor and he survived a bad day at the office by showing his toughness to beat a reigning British champion.” As Lee had explained the reaction to the fight was coloured by the scoring inaccuracies, Lee could understand the fan's frustrations yet also felt that his man was taking a lot of flak for the scoring of a fight he deserved to win, albeit by a narrower margin than the surreal cards turned in by an officiating mishap. Before ending the phone call Lee told BBN that he felt he had to inform people of the situation because the speculation had gone astray at times, his guy won a hard fight by gritting it out and he wanted that to be recognised. Unfortunately the officiating, clearly, left a lot to be desired, it had left Simpson pondering retirement from the sport and has left Derry fighting for his reputation. Fighters train for months on end for these fights, they try to do the best they can in the ring and produce the best they can. Surely the officials owe them the same dedication and vigilance in counting the numbers at the end of the fight. A mistake in the judging of a fight can be like a kick in the guts for the fighter who loses. Simpson has had a week of wondering exactly what happened to see him lose by such unusual margins and hopefully the explanation, while not making-up for the shock of the cards, will prompt him to continue his career. Blame, and the task of insuring this does not happen again, must fall upon the WBU, if they are to retain their lofty standing amongst British boxing fans (surely you jest, Terence? - Ed.) a statement should be provided about what exactly went wrong and why it went wrong. Admission of this kind can be cathartic and ensure that vigilance is taken to ensure the mistakes are not made again.

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