Samuel Peter and Oleg Maskaev Fought With Open Scoring, Sky Did Not Fall

When Samuel Peter fought Oleg Maskaev last night in Cancun, something highly unusual happened: The bout used "open scoring," meaning that between rounds, the ring announcer would tell everyone in the crowd how the judges had scored the fight up to that point.

That's very rare in boxing: The judges' scores are always kept secret until they've been tallied at the end of the fight. That's just the way things work.

And the HBO announcers working the fight think that's how the way things have to work. Jim Lampley said during the fight, "open scoring is a dreadful idea," and Max Kellerman added, "It's a terrible idea in practice if not in theory."

But the strange thing is, neither announcer could provide any example at all of how this dreadful, terrible idea was affecting the fight.


Aside from an odd moment at the start of a round when the fighters both seemed to pause to listen for a moment as the ringside announcer told the crowd what the judges' scorecards said, the fighters didn't seem the least bit affected by knowing the score.

In fact, although opponents of open scoring claim that it will cause the fighter winning the fight to play it safe, in reality, Peter did just the opposite. Prior to the sixth round, Peter's trainer told him, "you're winning by two points," and then Peter proceeded to go on the offensive in the sixth, ultimately winning the fight with a brutal assault that caused the referee to step in at the end of the round.

I've never understood why Lampley, Kellerman and so many other people around boxing oppose open scoring. And I think last night's fight was a good argument in favor of the practice.